LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Cliap Copyright No 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Wonders of Nature 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
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Wonders of Nature 

As Seen and Described 
by Famous Writers 

EDITED AND TRANSLATED 
/ 

By ESTHER SINGLETON 

AUTHOR OF " TURRETS, TOWERS AND TEMPLES," " GREAT 
PICTURES," " PARIS," AND " A GUIDE TO THE OPERA," AND 
TRANSLATOR OF THE MUSIC DRAMAS OF RICHARD WAGNER 

With Numerous Illustrations 



t 



NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 



1900 



57 95 5 

Library of Con.jr«t 



"'Wt CoftLb HtCE.VEO 

OCT 8 1900 
stcrw copy. 

l)fiiv«-f«rt to 

OKOttf CWStOH, 

OCT 27 1900 



^ * 
^ 



Copyright, iqoo 
By Dodd, Mead & Company 



Preface 



IN my former collections of objects of interest to the 
tourist, I have confined myself to masterpieces of 
painting and architecture. The success of those books has 
encouraged me to carry the idea still further and make a 
compilation of pleasurable and striking impressions pro- 
duced upon thoughtful travellers by a contemplation of the 
wonders of nature. 

The range is somewhat limited, for I have confined my- 
self to the description of the grand, the curious and the 
awe-inspiring in nature, leaving the beauties of landscape 
for future treatment. Those who miss the Lakes of Kil- 
larney or the vine-clad hills of the Rhine therefore will re- 
member that in the following pages I have purposely 
neglected beautiful scenery. 

The professional traveller, by which I mean the emissary 
of a scientific society, appears very seldom here, because it 
is the effect produced rather than the topographical or de- 
tailed description that I have sought. I hope this book will 
appeal to that large class of readers that takes pleasure in 
travelling by imagination, as well as to those who have 
actually seen the objects described and pictured here. 

It is interesting to note the difference between the old 
and the modern travellers. The day of the Marco Polos 



vi PREFACE 

has passed; the traveller of old seemed to feel himself 
under an obligation to record marvels and report trifling 
details, while the modern traveller is more concerned about 
describing or analyzing the effect produced upon himself. 
He feels it encumbent upon him to exhibit aesthetic appre- 
ciation. For this tendency we have to thank Gautier and 
his humble follower D'Amicis. Thackeray and Dickens 
write of their journeyings in a holiday spirit •> Kipling is a 
stimulating combination of the flippant and the devout ; 
Shelley is quite up to date ; and Fromentin and Gautier always 
speak in terms of the palette. Thus we get an additional 
pleasure from the varied literary treatment of nature's 
wonders — apart from their intrinsic interest. 

Though there is a great deal of information in the fol- 
lowing pages, I have generally avoided what is simply in- 
structive ; my aim has been to suit all tastes. 

For the kind permission to use The Mammoth Cave, Fusi 
San and The Antarctic, and The Yellowstone, my best thanks 
are due to Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, Messrs. Long- 
mans, Green and Co., and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. 

E. S. 

New York, September, 1900. 



Contents 



The Blue Grotto of Capri 

Alexandre Dumas. 

Mount Blanc and Chamouni 

Percy Bysshe Shelley. 



The Dead Sea 
Mount Vesuvius 



Pierre Loti. 



Charles Dickens. 

The Falls of the Rhine 

Victor Hugo. 

In Arctic and Antarctic Seas 

I. Lord Dufferin. 
II. W. G. Burn Murdock 

The Desert of Sahara . 

Eugene Fromentin. 
Fingal's Cave ...... 

I. Sir Walter Scott. 
II. John Keats. 

In the Himalayas . 

G. W. Steevens. 



7 
*5 
25 
39 
46 

55 
62 

7i 



Niagara Falls ........ 79 

I. Anthony Trollope. 
II. Charles Dickens. 

Fuji-San ......... 90 

Sir Edwin Arnold. 



viii CONTENTS 

The Cedars of Lebanon ...... 98 

Alphonse de Lamartine. 

The Giant's Causeway . . . . . .103 

William Makepeace Thackeray 

The Great Glacier of the Selkirks . . . .113 

Douglas Sladen. 

Mauna Loa . . . . . . . .118 

Lady Brassey 
Trollhatta . . . . . . . . 1 29 

Hans Christian Andersen. 

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado . . . .134 

C. F. Gordon-Cumming. 

The Rock of Gibraltar . . . . . .139 

Augustus J. C. Hare. 
Thingvalla . . . . . . . .144 

Lord Dufferin. 

Land's End and Logan Rock . . . . .152 

John Ayrton Paris. 
Mount Hekla . . . . . . . . 160 

Sir Richard F. Burton. 
Victoria Falls . . . . . . . .169 

David Livingstone. 

The Dragon-Tree of Orotava . . . - . .179 

Alexander von Humboldt 

Mount Shasta . . . . . . . .183 

J. W.Boddam-Wheatham. 
The Lagoons of Venice . . . . . .189 

John Ruskin. 
The Cataracts of the Nile . . . . .199 

Amelia B. Edwards. 
In the Alps ........ 205 

Theophile Gautier. 



CONTENTS ix 

The Vale of Kashmir . . . . . .212 

Andrew Wilson 

The Lake of Pitch . . . . . . .220 

Charles Kingsley. 

The Lachine Rapids ^ ..... 228 

Douglas Sladen. 

Lake Rotorua . . . . . . . .232 

H. R. Haweis. 

The Big Trees of California ..... 239 
C. F. Gordon-Cumming. 

Gersoppa Falls ........ 248 

W. M. Yool. 
Etna . . . . . . . . . 254 

Alexandre Dumas. 

Pike's Peak and the Garden of the Gods . . . 263 

Iza Duffus Hardy. 

The Great Geysir of Iceland ..... 268 
Sir Richard F. Burton. 

The Rapids of the Danube . . . . . .275 

William Beattie. 
The Mammoth Cave ....... 283 

Bayard Taylor. 
Stromboli ......... 295 

Alexandre Dumas'. 
The High Woods ....... 302 

Charles Kingsley. 
The Yo-semit£ Valley . . . . . .323 

C. F. Gordon-Cumming. 
The Golden Horn ....... 342 

Alphonse de Lamartine. 

The Yellowstone . . . . . . • 35 2 

Rudyard Kipling. 



Illustrations 



Mer de Glace, Mont Blanc Switzerland . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Blue Grotto Italy 2 

Chamouni, Mer de Glace Switzerland 8 

The Dead Sea . Palestine 16 

Mount Vesuvius Italy 26 

The Falls of the Rhine Germany 40 

An Ice Floe Antarctic 52 

The Desert of Sahara Africa 56 

Fingal's Cave Scotland 62 

The Himilavas India 72 

Niagara Falls North America .... 80 1; 

Niagara Falls in Winter North America .... 86 

Fuji-San Japan 90 

The Cedars of Lebanon Syria 98 

The Giant's Loom, Giant's Causeway . Ireland 104 

The Keystone, Giant's Causeway . . . Ireland 108 

The Great Glacier of the Selkirks . Canada 1 14 

Lava Cascade Flow Hawaii 118 

Trollhatta Sweden 130 

Canyon of the Colorado North America . . . .134 

The Rock of Gibraltar Spain 140 

The Rock of Gibraltar Spain 142 

Thingvalla Iceland 144 

Rocking Stones, Land's End England 152 

Falls of the Zambesi Africa 170 

The Dragon-Tree Teneriffe 180 

Mount Shasta North America . . . .184 

The City of the Lagoons Italy 190 



xii ILLUSTRATIONS 

First Cataract of the Nile Africa 198 

Mont Blanc Switzerland 206 

Aiguille du Dru, Alps Switzerland 210 

The Vale of Kashmir India 212 

The Lachine Rapids Canada 228 

Lake Rotorua New Zealand 232 

The Big Trees of California North America . . . 240 

Gersoppa Falls India 248 

ETNA Sicily 254 

The Garden of the Gods . America 264 

The Iron Gates of the Danube . . . Turkey 276 

The High Woods South America .... 302 

The Yo-semite Valley^ North America . . . 324 

The Golden Horn Turkey 342 

Costing Springs, Yellowstone North America . . 352 



WONDERS OF NATURE 



THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI 

ALEXANDRE DUMAS 

WE were surrounded by five and twenty boatmen, 
each of whom exerted himself to get our cus- 
tom : these were the ciceroni of the Blue Grotto. I chose 
one and Jadin another, for you must have a boat and a 
boatman to get there, the opening being so low and so nar- 
row that one cannot enter unless in a very small boat. 

The sea was calm, nevertheless, even in this beautiful 
weather it broke with such force against the belt of rocks 
surrounding the island that our barks bounded as if in a 
tempest, and we were obliged to lie down and cling to the 
sides to avoid being » thrown into the sea. At last, after 
three-quarters of an hour of navigation, during which we 
skirted about one-sixth of the island's circumference, our 
boatmen informed us of our arrival. We looked about us, 
but we could not perceive the slightest suspicion of a grotto 
until we made out with difficulty a little black, circular 
point above the foaming waves : this was the orifice of the 

vault. 

i 



2 THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI 

The first sight of this entrance was not reassuring : you 
could not understand how it was possible to clear it without 
breaking your head against the rocks. As the question 
seemed important enough for discussion, I put it to my 
boatman, who replied that we were perfectly right in re- 
maining seated now, but presently we must lie down to 
avoid the danger. We had not come so far as this to flinch. 
It was my turn first; my boatman advanced, rowing with 
precaution and indicating that, accustomed as he was to the 
work, he could not regard it as exempt from danger. As 
for me, from the position that I occupied, I could see noth- 
ing but the sky ; soon I felt myself rising upon a wave, the 
boat slid down it rapidly, and I saw nothing but a rock that 
seemed for a second to weigh upon my breast. Then, sud- 
denly, I found myself in a grotto so marvellous that I gave 
a cry of astonishment, and I jumped up so quickly to look 
about me that I nearly capsized the boat. 

In reality, before me, around me, above me, under me, 
and behind me were marvels of which no description can 
give an idea, and before which, the brush itself, the grand 
preserver of human memories, is powerless. You must 
imagine an immense cavern entirely of azure, just as if God 
had amused himself by making a pavilion with fragments of 
the firmament ; water so limpid, so transparent, and so 
pure that you seemed floating upon dense air; from the 
ceiling stalactites hanging like inverted pyramids ; in the 
background a golden sand mingled with submarine vegeta- 
tion ; along the walls which were bathed by the water there 
were trees of coral with irregular and dazzling branches; at 



THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI 3 

the sea-entrance, a tiny point — a star — let in the half-light 
that illumines this fairy palace; finally, at the opposite end, 
a kind of stage arranged like the throne of a splendid god- 
dess who has chosen one of the wonders of the world for 
her baths. 

At this moment the entire grotto assumed a deeper hue, 
darkening as the earth does when a cloud passes across the 
sun at brightest noontide. It was caused by Jadin, who 
entered in his turn and whose boat closed the mouth of the 
cavern. Soon he was thrown near me by the force of the 
wave that had lifted him up ; the grotto recovered its beauti- 
ful shade of azure ; and his boat stopped tremblingly near 
mine, for this sea, so agitated and obstreperous outside, 
breathes here as serenely and gently as a lake. 

In all probability the Blue Grotto was unknown to the 
ancients. No poet speaks of it, and certainly, with their 
marvellous imagination, the Greeks would not have neg- 
lected making of it the palace of some sea-goddess with a 
musical name and leaving some story to us. Suetonius, 
who describes for us with so much detail the Thermes and 
baths of Tiberius, would certainly have devoted a few 
words to this natural pool which the old emperor would 
doubtless have chosen as the theatre for some of his mon- 
strous pleasures. No, the ocean must have been much 
higher at that epoch than it is at present, and this marvel- 
lous sea-cave was known only to Amphitrite and her court 
of Sirens, Nai'ads, and Tritons. 

But sometimes Amphitrite is angered with the indiscreet 
travellers who follow her into this retreat, just as Diana 



4 THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI 

was when surprised by Actaeon. At such times the sea 
rises suddenly and closes the entrance so effectually that 
those who have entered cannot leave. In this case, they 
must wait until the wind, which has veered from east to 
west, changes to south or north ; and it has even happened 
that visitors, who have come to spend twenty minutes in 
the Blue Grotto, have had to remain two, three, and, even 
four, days. Therefore, the boatmen always carry with them 
a certain portion of a kind of biscuit to nourish the prison- 
ers in the event of such an accident. With regard to water, 
enough filters through two or three places in the grotto to 
prevent any fear of thirst. I bestowed a few reproaches 
upon my boatman for having waited so long to apprise me 
of so disquieting a fact; but he replied with a charming 
naivete : 

" Dame ! excellence ! If we told this to the visitors at 
first, only half would come, and that would make the boat- 
men angry." 

I admit that after this accidental information, I was seized 
with a certain uneasiness, on account of which I found the 
Blue Grotto infinitely less delightful than it had appeared to 
me at first. Unfortunately, my boatman had told me these 
details just at the moment when I was undressing to bathe 
in this water, which is so beautiful and transparent that to 
attract the fisherman it would not need the song of Goethe's 
poetical Undine. We were unwilling to waste any time in 
preparations, and, wishing to enjoy ourselves as much as 
possible, we both dived. 

It is only when you are five or six feet below the surface 



THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI 5 

of the water that you can appreciate its incredible purity. 
Notwithstanding the liquid that envelops the diver, no de- 
tail escapes him ; he sees everything, — the tiniest shell at 
the base of the smallest stalactite of the arch, just as clearly 
as if through the air; only each object assumes a deeper 
hue. 

At the end of a quarter of an hour, we clambered back 
into our boats and dressed ourselves without having appar- 
ently attracted one of the invisible nymphs of this watery 
palace, who would not have hesitated, if the contrary had 
been the case, to have kept us here twenty-four hours at 
least. The fact was humiliating ; but neither of us pre- 
tended to be a Telemachus, and so we took our departure. 
We again crouched in the bottom of our respective canoes, 
and we went out of the Blue Grotto with the same precau- 
tions and the same good luck with which we had entered 
it : only it was six minutes before we could open our eyes ; 
the ardent glare of the sun blinded us. We had not gone 
more than a hundred feet away from the spot we had 
visited before it seemed to have melted into a dream. 

We landed again at the port of Capri. While we were 
settling our account with our boatmen, Pietro pointed out 
a man lying down in the sunshine with his face in the sand. 
This was the fisherman who nine or ten years ago discov- 
ered the Blue Grotto while looking for frutti di mare along 
the rocks. He went immediately to the authorities of the 
island to make his discovery known, and asked the privi- 
lege of being the only one allowed to conduct visitors to 
the new world he had found, and to have revenue from 



6 THE BLUE GROTTO OF CAPRI 

those visitors. The authorities, who saw in this discovery 
a means of attracting strangers to their island, agreed to the 
second proposition, and since that time this new Christopher 
Columbus has lived upon his income and does not trouble 
to conduct the visitors himself; this explains why he can 
sleep as we see him. He is the most envied individual in 
the island. 

As we had seen all that Capri offered us in the way of 
wonders, we stepped into our launch and regained the 
Speronare, which, profiting by several puffs of the land 
breeze, set sail and gently glided off in the direction of 
Palermo. 

Le Speronare : Impressions de Voyage (Paris, 1836). 



MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

FROM Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni — 
Mont Blanc was before us — the Alps, with their 
innumerable glaciers on high all around, closing in the 
complicated windings of the single vale — forests inexpress- 
ibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty — intermingled 
beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or re- 
ceded, whilst lawns of such verdure as I have never seen 
before occupied these openings, and gradually became 
darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc was before us, but it 
was covered with cloud ; its base furrowed with dreadful 
gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably 
bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone 
through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew — I 
never imagined what mountains were before. The im- 
mensity of these aerial summits excited, when they sud- 
denly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of extatic wonder, 
not unallied to madness. And remember this was all one 
scene, it all pressed home to our regard and our imagina- 
tion. Though it embraced a vast extent of space, the 
snowy pyramids which shot into the bright blue sky seemed 
to overhang our path ; the ravine, clothed with gigantic 
pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very 



8 MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI 

roaring of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it 
could not be heard above — all was as much our own, as if 
we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds 
of others as now occupied our own. Nature was the poet, 
whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that 
of the divinest. 

As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact 
may be considered as a continuation of those which we 
have followed from Bonneville and Cluses) clouds hung 
upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6,000 feet 
from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only 
Mont Blanc, but the other aiguilles, as they call them here, 
attached and subordinate to them. We were travelling 
along the valley, when suddenly we heard a sound as of 
the burst of smothered thunder rolling above ; yet there 
was something earthly in the sound, that told us it could 
not be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part 
of the mountain opposite, from whence the sound came. 
It was an avalanche. We saw the smoke of its path 
among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals the 
bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which 
it displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-coloured wa- 
ters also spread themselves over the ravine, which was their 
couch. 

We did not, as we intended, visit the Glacier de Boisson 
to-day, although it descends within a few minutes' walk of 
the road, wishing to survey it at least when unfatigued. 
We saw this glacier which comes close to the fertile plain, 
as we passed, its surface was broken into a thousand unac- 



MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI 9 

countable figures : conical and pyramidical crystallizations, 
more than fifty feet in height, rise from its surface, and 
precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the 
woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds up- 
wards from the valley, until it joins the masses of frost 
from which it was produced above, winding through its 
own ravine like a bright belt flung over the black region of 
pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere mag- 
nitude of proportion : there is a majesty of outline ; there 
is an awful grace in the very colours which invest these 
wonderful shapes — a charm which is peculiar to them, quite 
distinct even from the reality of their unutterable greatness. 
Yesterday morning we went to the source of the 
Arveiron. It is about a league from this village ; the 
river rolls forth impetuously from an arch of ice, and 
spreads itself in many streams over a vast space of the val- 
ley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The glacier 
by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern 
and the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, 
with terrible precipices of solid ice. On the other side 
rises the immense glacier of Montanvert, fifty miles in ex- 
tent, occupying a chasm among mountains of inconceivable 
height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they seem 
to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw as we sat on 
a rock, close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses 
of ice detach themselves from on high, and rush with a loud 
dull noise into the vale. The violence of their fall turned 
them into powder, which flowed over the rocks in imita- 
tion of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and filled. 



10 MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI 

In the evening I went with Ducree, my guide, the only 
tolerable person I have seen in this country, to visit the 
glacier of Boisson. This glacier, like that of Montanvert, 
comes close to the vale, overhanging the green meadows 
and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness of its prec- 
ipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant crystal 
covered with a network of frosted silver. These glaciers 
flow perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but 
irresistible progress the pastures and the forests which sur- 
round them, performing a work of desolation in ages, 
which a river of lava might accomplish in an hour, but far 
more irretrievably ; for where the ice has once descended, 
the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some ex- 
traordinary instances, it should recede after its progress has 
once commenced. The glaciers perpetually move onward, 
at the rate of a foot each day, with a motion that com- 
mences at the spot where, on the boundaries of perpetual 
congelation, they are produced by the freezing of the waters 
which arise from the partial melting of the eternal snows. 
They drag with them from the regions whence they derive 
their origin, all the ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, 
and immense accumulations of sand and stones. These are 
driven onwards by the irresistible stream of solid ice ; and 
when they arrive at a declivity of the mountain, sufficiently 
rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw one of these rocks 
which had descended in the spring (winter here is the sea- 
son of silence and safety) which measured forty feet in 
every direction. 

The verge of a glacier, like that of Boisson, presents the 



MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI II 

most vivid image of desolation that it is possible to con- 
ceive. No one dares to approach it ; for the enormous 
pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall, are perpetually re- 
produced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at one 
extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at 
its base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the 
aspect of the few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the 
ice rifts, still stand in the uprooted soil. The meadows 
perish, overwhelmed with sand and stones. Within this 
last year, these glaciers have advanced three hundred feet 
into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they 
have their periods of increase and decay : the people of the 
country hold an opinion entirely different ; but as I judge, 
more probable. It is agreed by all, that the snow on the 
summit of Mont Blanc and the neighbouring mountains 
perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form of glaciers, 
subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during 
its transient and variable summer. If the snow which pro- 
duces this glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley 
is no obstacle to the perpetual existence of such masses of 
ice as have already descended into it, the consequence is 
obvious; the glaciers must augment and will subsist, at 
least until they have overflowed this vale. 

I will not pursue BufFon's sublime but gloomy theory — - 
that this globe which we inhabit will at some future period 
be changed into a mass of frost by the encroachment of the 
polar ice, and of that produced on the most elevated points 
of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy of Ahri- 
man, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, 



12 MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI 

among these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this 
their terrible magnificence by the adamantine hand of 
necessity, and that he casts around him, as the first essays 
of his final usurpation, avalanches, torrents, rocks, and 
thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at once the 
proof and symbols of his reign ; — add to this, the degrada- 
tion of the human species — who in these regions are half- 
deformed or idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of any- 
thing that can excite interest or admiration. This is a part 
of the subject more mournful and less sublime ; but such 
as neither the poet nor the philosopher should disdain to 
regard. 

This morning we departed on the promise of a fine day, 
to visit the glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it 
fills a slanting valley, it is called the Sea of Ice. This val- 
ley is 950 toises, or 7,600 feet above the level of the sea. 
We had not proceeded far before the rain began to fall, but 
we persisted until we had accomplished more than half of 
our journey, when we returned, wet through. 

Chamouni, July 25th. 
We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montan- 
vert, or as it is called, the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of 
dizzying wonder. The path that winds to it along the 
side of a mountain, now clothed with pines, now intersected 
with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of 
Montanvert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which 
distance is performed on mules, not so sure footed, but that 
on the first day the one I rode fell in what the guides call a 



MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI 1 3 

mauvais pas^ so that I narrowly escaped being precipitated 
down the mountain. We passed over a hollow covered 
with snow, down which vast stones are accustomed to roll. 
One had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had 
returned : our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is said 
that sometimes the least sound will accelerate their descent. 
We arrived at Montanvert, however, safe. 

On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unre- 
lenting frost, surround this vale : their sides are banked up 
with ice and snow, broken, heaped high, and exhibiting ter- 
rific chasms. The summits are sharp and naked pinnacles, 
whose overhanging steepness will not even permit snow to 
rest upon them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and 
there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the driving 
vapours with inexpressible brilliance : they pierce the clouds 
like things not belonging to this earth. The vale itself is 
filled with a mass of undulating ice, and has an ascent suf- 
ficiently gradual even to the remotest abysses of these hor- 
rible deserts. It is only half a league (about two miles) in 
breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an appearance as 
if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of 
a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its sur- 
face. The waves are elevated about twelve or fifteen feet 
from the surface of the mass, which is intersected by long 
gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more 
beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions every- 
thing changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has 
one general progress, which ceases neither day nor night ; 
it breaks and bursts forever : some undulations sink while 



14 MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI 

others rise ; it is never the same. The echo of rocks, or 
of the ice and snow which fall from their overhanging 
precipices, or roll from their aerial summits, scarcely ceases 
for one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc, like 
the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the 
frozen blood forever circulated through his stony veins. 

Prose works (London, 1880). 



THE DEAD SEA 
PIERRE LOTI 

A SOUND of church bells follows us for a long time 
in the lonely country as we ride away on horse- 
back in the early morning towards Jericho, towards the 
Jordan and the Dead Sea. The Holy City speedily disap- 
pears from our eyes, hidden behind the Mount of Olives. 
There are fields of green barley here and there, but principally 
regions of stones and asphodels. Nowhere are there any 
trees. Red anemones and violet irises enamel the greyness 
of the rough country, all rock and desert. By a series of 
gorges, valleys, and precipices we follow a gradually de- 
scending route. Jerusalem is at an altitude of eight hundred 
metres and this Dead Sea to which we are going is four 
hundred metres below the level of other seas. 

If it were not for this way for vehicles upon which our 
horses walk so easily, one would be tempted to call it every 
now and then Idumaea, or Arabia. 

This road to Jericho is, moreover, full of people to-day : 
Bedouins upon camels ; Arabian shepherds driving hundreds 
of black goats ; bands of Cook's tourists on horseback, or 
in mule-chairs ; Russian pilgrims, who are returning on 
foot from the Jordan, piously carrying gourds filled with 
water from the sacred river; numerous troops of Greek 



1 6 THE DEAD SEA 

pilgrims from the island of Cyprus, upon asses ; incon- 
gruous caravans and strange groups which we overtake or 
meet. 

It is soon midday. The high mountains of the country 
of Moab which lie beyond the Dead Sea, and which we 
have seen ever since we reached Hebron like a diaphanous 
wall in the east seem to be as distant as ever, although for 
three hours we have been advancing towards them, — ap- 
parently fleeing before us like the visions of a mirage. But 
they have grown misty and gloomy ; all that was trailing in 
the sky like light veils in the morning has gathered and 
condensed upon their peaks, while a purer and more mag- 
nificent blue now extends above our heads. 

Half-way from Jericho, we make the great halt in a 
caravansary, where there are Bedouins, Syrians, and Greeks ; 
then we again mount our horses beneath a burning sun. 

Every now and then, in the yawning gulfs far below us 
the torrent of the Cedron is visible like a thread of foaming 
silver ; its course here is not troubled as beneath the walls 
of Jerusalem, and it rushes along rapidly towards the Dead 
Sea, half-hidden in the deepest hollows of the abysses. 

The mountain slopes continue to run down towards this 
strange and unique region, situated below the level of the 
sea, where sleep the waters which produce death. It 
seems that one is made conscious of something abnormal in 
this continuous descent by some unknown sense of oddity 
and even giddiness suggested by these slopes. Growing 
more and more grand and rugged, the country now pre- 
sents almost the appearance of a true desert. But the 



THE DEAD SEA 1 7 

impression of immeasurable solitude is not experienced 
here. And then there is always that road traced by human 
hands and these continual meetings with horsemen and 
various passengers. 

The air is already dryer and warmer than at Jerusalem, 
and the light becomes more and more magnifying, — as is 
always the case when one approaches places devoid of 
vegetation. 

The mountains are ever more and more denuded and 
more cracked by the dryness, opening everywhere with 
crevasses like great abysses. The heat increases in pro- 
portion as we descend to the shore of the Dead Sea which 
in summer is one of the hottest places in the world. A 
mournful sun darts its rays around us upon the rocks, 
masses of stone, and pale limestone where the lizards run 
about by the thousand j whilst over beyond us, serving as 
a background for everything, stands ever the chain of Moab, 
like a Dantesque wall. And to-day storm-clouds darken 
and deform it, hiding its peaks, or carrying them up too 
high into the sky and forming other imaginary peaks, thus 
producing the terror of chaos. 

In a certain deep valley, through which our way lies for 
a moment, shut in without any view between vertical walls, 
some hundreds of camels are at pasture, hanging like great 
fantastic goats to the flanks of the mountains, — the highest 
perched one of all the troop silhouetted against the sky. 

Then we issue from this defile and the mountains of 
Moab reappear, higher then ever now and more obscured 
by clouds. Upon this sombre background the near pro- 



T 8 THE DEAD SEA 

spective of this desolate country stands out very clearly ; the 
summits are whitish and all around us blocks, absolutely 
white, are delineated by the broiling sun with an extreme 
hardness of outline. 

Towards three o'clock, from the elevated regions where 
we still are, we see before us the country that is lower than 
the sea, and, as if our eyes had preserved the remembrance 
of ordinary levels, this really seems not an ordinary plain, 
but something too low and a great depression of the earth, 
the bottom of a vast gulf into which the road is about to 
fall. 

This sunken region has the features of the desert, with 
gleaming grey wastes like fields of lava, or beds of salt; in 
its midst an unexpectedly green patch, which is the oasis of 
Jericho, — and towards the south, a motionless expanse with 
the polish of a mirror and the sad hue of slate, which be- 
gins and loses itself in the distance with a limitless horizon : 
the Dead Sea, enwrapped in darkness to-day by all the 
clouds of the distance, by all that is heavy and opaque 
yonder weighing upon the border of Moab. 

The few little white houses of Jericho are gradually out- 
lined in the green of the oasis in proportion as we descend 
from our stony summits, inundated with the sun. One 
would hardly call it a village. It seems that there is not 
the least vestige of the three large and celebrated cities that 
formerly successively occupied this site and that in different 
ages were called Jericho. These utter destructions and 
annihilations of the cities of Canaan and Idumaea seem to 
be for the confounding of human reason. Truly a very 



THE DEAD SEA 1 9 

powerful breath of malediction and death must have passed 
over it all. 

When we are finally down in the plain, an insufferable 
heat surprises us ; one would say that we had traversed an 
immense distance southward, — and yet, in reality, we have 
only descended a few hundred metres towards the bowels of 
the earth : it is to their depressed level that the environs of 
the Dead Sea owe their exceptional climate. 

Jericho is composed to-day of a little Turkish citadel, 
three or four new houses built for pilgrims and tourists, 
half a hundred Arab habitations of mud with roofing of 
thorny branches and a few Bedouin tents. Round about 
them are gardens in which grow an occasional palm ; a 
wood of green shrubs traversed by clear brooks ; some paths 
overrun by grass, where horsemen in burnous caracole upon 
their horses with long manes and tails. And that is all. 
Immediately beyond the wood the uninhabitable desert be- 
gins ; and the Dead Sea lies there very near, spreading its 
mysterious winding-sheet above the engulfed kingdoms of 
Sodom and Gomorrah. This Sea has a very individual as- 
pect, and this evening it is very funereal; it truly gives the 
impression of death, with its heavy, leaden, and motionless 
waters between the deserts of its two shores where great 
confused mountains mingle with the storm-clouds hanging 
in the sky. 

Sunday, April 8th. 
From Jericho, where we passed the night, the Dead Sea 
seems very near; one would think in a few minutes it would 



20 THE DEAD SEA 

be easy to reach its tranquil sheet, — which this morning is 
of a blue barely tinted with slate, under a sky rid of all of 
yesterday's clouds. Yet, to reach it, almost two hours on 
horseback are still required, under a heavy sun, across the 
little desert which, minus the immensity, resembles the large 
one in which we have just spent so many days ; towards 
this Sea, which seems to flee in proportion as we approach, 
we descend by means of a series of exhausted strata and des- 
olate plateaux, all glittering with sand and salt. Here we 
find a few of the odoriferous plants of Arabia Petraea, and 
even the semblance of a mirage, the uncertainty as to dis- 
tances and the continual tremulousness of the horizon. 
We also find here a band of Bedouins resembling very 
closely our friends of the desert in their shirts with long 
pointed sleeves floating like wings, and their little brown 
veils tied to the forehead with black cords, the two 
ends of which stand up on the temples like the ears of an 
animal. Moreover, these shores of the Dead Sea, espe- 
cially on the southern side, are frequented by pillagers al- 
most as much as Idumaea. 

We know that geologists trace the existence of the Dead 
Sea back to the first ages of the world ; they do not contest, 
however, that at the period of the destruction of the ac- 
cursed cities it must have suddenly overflowed, after some 
new eruption, to cover the site of the Moabite pentapolis. 
And it was at that time that was engulfed all this " Vale of 
Siddim," where were assembled, against Chedorlaomer, the 
kings of Sodom, of Gomorrah, of Admah, of Zeboiim, and 
of Zoar (Genesis xiv. 2, 3) ; all that " plain of Siddim" which 



THE DEAD SEA 21 

" was well watered everywhere," like a garden of delight 
(Genesis xiii. io). Since these remote times, this Sea has 
receded a little, without, however, its form being sensibly- 
changed. And, beneath the shroud of its heavy waters, 
unfathomable to the diver by their very density, sleep strange 
ruins, debris^ which, without doubt, will never be explored ; 
Sodom and Gomorrah are there, buried in their dark 
depths. 

At present, the Dead Sea, terminated at the north by the 
sands we cross, extends to a length of about eighty kilo- 
metres, between two ranges of parallel mountains : to the 
east, those of Moab, eternally oozing bitumen, which stand 
this morning in their sombre violet ; to the west, those of 
Judea, of another nature, entirely of whitish limestone, at 
this moment dazzling with sunlight. On both shores the 
desolation is equally absolute ; the same silence hovers over 
the same appearances of death. These are indeed the im- 
mutable and somewhat terrifying aspects of the desert, — 
and one can understand the very intense impression pro- 
duced upon travellers who do not know the Arabia Magna; 
but, for us, there is here only a too greatly diminished 
image of the mournful phantasmagoria of that region. Be- 
sides, one does not lose altogether the view of the citadel 
of Jericho; from our horses we may still perceive it be- 
hind us, like a vague little white point, but still a protector. 
In the extreme distance of the desert sands, under the 
trembling network of mirage, appears also an ancient for- 
tress, which is a monastery for Greek hermits. And, 
finally, another white blot, just perceptible above us, in a 



22 THE DEAD SEA 

recess of the mountains of Judah, stands that mausoleum 
which passes for the tomb of Moses — for which a great 
Mohammedan pilgrimage is soon about to start. 

However, upon the sinister strand where we arrive, death 
reveals itself, truly sovereign and imposing. First, like a 
line of defence which it is necessary to surmount, comes a 
belt of drift-wood, branches and trees stripped of all bark, 
almost petrified in the chemical bath, and whitened like 
bones, — one would call them an accumulation of great 
vertebrae. Then there are some rounded pebbles as on the 
shore of every sea ; but not a single shell, not a piece of 
seaweed, not even a little greenish slime, nothing organic, 
not even of the lower order ; and nowhere else has this 
ever been seen, a sea whose bed is as sterile as a crucible 
of alchemy ; this is something abnormal and disconcerting. 
Some dead fish lie here and there, hardened like wood, 
mummified in the naptha and the salts : fish of the Jor- 
dan which the current brought here and which the accursed 
waters suffocated instantly. 

And before us, this sea flees, between its banks of des- 
ert mountains, to the troubled horizon with an appearance 
of never ending. Its whitish, oily waters bear blots of 
bitumen, spread in large iridescent rings. Moreover, they 
burn, if you drink them, like a corrosive liquor ; if you 
enter them up to your knees you have difficulty in walking, 
they are so heavy ; you cannot dive in them nor even 
swim in the ordinary position, but you can float upon the 
surface like a cork buoy. 

Once the Emperor Titus, as an experiment, had several 



THE DEAD SEA 23 

slaves bound together with iron chains and cast in, and they 
did not drown. 

On the eastern shore, in the little sandy desert where we 
have just been marching for two hours, a line of a beauti- 
ful emerald serpentines ; a few flocks and a few Arabian 
shepherds that are half bandits pass in the far distance. 

Towards the middle of the day we reenter Jericho, 
whence we shall not depart until to-morrow morning, and 
there remain the tranquil hours of the evening for us to go 
over the still oasis. 

When we are seated before the porch of the little inn of 
Jericho in the warm twilight, we see a wildly galloping 
horse, bringing a monk in a black robe with long hair 
floating in the wind. He is one of the hermits of the 
Mount of the Forty Days, who is trying to be the first to 
arrive and offer us some little objects in the wood of Jeri- 
cho and shell rosaries from the Jordan. — At nightfall others 
come, dressed in the same black robe, and with the same 
thin hair around their bandit's countenance, and enter the 
inn to entice us with little carvings and similar chaplets. 

The night is sultry here, and a little heavy, quite differ- 
ent to the cold nights of Jerusalem, and just as the stars 
begin to shine a concert of frogs begins simultaneously 
from every side, under the dark entanglement of the balms 
of Gilead, — so continuous and, moreover, so discreet is it, 
that it seems but another expression of the tranquil silence. 
You hear also the barking of the sheep-dogs, below, on the 
side of the Arabian encampments ; then, very far away, 
the drum and the little Bedouin flute furnish the rhythm 



24 THE DEAD SEA 

for some wild fete ; — and, at intervals, but very distinctly, 
comes the lugubrious falsetto of a hyena or jackal. 

Now, here is the unexpected refrain of the coffee-houses 
of Berlin, which suddenly bursts forth, in ironical disso- 
nance, in the midst of these light and immutable sounds of 
ancient evenings in Judea : the German tourists who have 
been here since sunset, encamped under the tents of agen- 
cies; a band of "Cook's tourists" come to see and pro- 
fane, as far as they can, this little desert. 

It is after midnight, when everything is hushed and the 
silence belongs to the nightingales which fill the oasis with 
an exquisite and clear music of crystal. 

Jerusalem (Paris, 1895). 



MOUNT VESUVIUS 

CHARLES DICKENS 

A NOBLE mountain pass, with the ruins of a fort on 
a strong eminence, traditionally called the Fort of 
Fra Diavolo ; the old town of Itrf, like a device in pastry, 
built up, almost perpendicularly, on a hill, and approached 
by long steep flights of steps ; beautiful Mola di Gaeta, 
whose wines, like those of Albano, have degenerated since 
the days of Horace, or his taste for wine was bad : which is 
not likely of one who enjoyed it so much, and extolled it 
so well ; another night upon the road at St. Agatha ; a rest 
next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but hardly so se- 
ductive to a traveller now as the soldiers of Praetorian Rome 
were wont to find the ancient city of that name ; a flat road 
among vines festooned and looped from tree to tree ; and 
Mount Vesuvius close at hand at last ! — its cone and summit 
whitened with snow ; and its smoke hanging over it, in the 
heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense cloud. So we 
go, rattling down-hill, into Naples. 

Capri — once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius — 
Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the 
Bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and 
sunshine twenty times a day : now close at hand, now far 
off, now unseen. The fairest country in the world is 



26 MOUNT VESUVIUS 

spread about us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno 
shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the 
Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane, and away to 
Baiae : or take the other way, towards Vesuvius and Sor- 
rento, it is one succession of delights. In the last-named 
direction, where, over doors and archways, there are count- 
less little images of San Gennaro, with his Canute's hand 
stretched out to check the fury of the Burning Mountain, 
we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea 
Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the 
ashes of the former town, destroyed by an eruption of Vesu- 
vius, within a hundred years, and past the flat-roofed houses, 
granaries, and macaroni manufactories; to Castel-a-Mare, 
with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing 
in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad termi- 
nates ; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succes- 
sion of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping 
from the highest summit of St. Angelo, the highest neigh- 
bouring mountain, down to the water's edge—among vine- 
yards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, 
heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills — and by the bases 
of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with 
handsome, dark-haired women at the doors — and pass de- 
licious summer villas — to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso 
drew his inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. 
Returning, we may climb the heights above Castel-a-Mare, 
and, looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the 
crisp water glistening in the sun, and clusters of white 
houses in distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of 



MOUNT VESUVIUS 27 

prospect, down to dice. The coming back to the city, by 
the beach again, at sunset : with the glowing sea on one 
side, and the darkening mountain, with its smoke and 
flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the glory 
of the day. 

Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, 
and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples 
of Jupiter and Isis, over the broken houses with their in- 
most sanctuaries open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, 
bright and snowy in the peaceful distance ; and lose all 
count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and 
melancholy sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the De- 
stroyer making this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ram- 
ble on, and see, at every turn, the little familiar tokens of 
human habitation and every-day pursuits ; the chafing of 
the bucket rope in the stone rim of the exhausted well ; the 
track of carriage wheels in the pavement of the street ; the 
marks of drinking vessels on the stone counter of the wine- 
shop ; the amphorae in private cellars, stored away so many 
hundred years ago, and undisturbed to this hour — all ren- 
dering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the place 
ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its 
fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the 
bottom of the sea. 

After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded 
the eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in 
stone, new ornaments for temples and other buildings that 
had suffered. Here lies their work, outside the city gate, 
as if they would return to-morrow. 



2 8 MOUNT VESUVIUS 

In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skeletons 
were found huddled together, close to the door, the impres- 
sion of their bodies on the ashes hardened with the ashes, 
and became stamped and fixed there, after they had shrunk, 
inside, to scanty bones. So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, 
a comic mask, floating on the stream when it was hot and 
liquid, stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into 
stone, and now it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look 
it turned upon the audiences in that same theatre two thou- 
sand years ago. 

Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, 
and in and out of the houses, and traversing the secret 
chambers of the temples of a religion that has vanished 
from the earth, and finding so many fresh traces of remote 
antiquity : as if the course of Time had been stopped after 
this desolation, and there had been no nights and days, 
months, years, and centuries since : nothing is more im- 
pressive and terrible than the many evidences of the search- 
ing nature of the ashes as bespeaking their irresistible 
power, and the impossibility of escaping them. In the 
wine-cellars, they forced their way into the earthen vessels : 
displacing the wine, and choking them, to the brim, with 
dust. In the tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from 
the funeral urns, and rained new ruin even into them. The 
mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the skeletons were 
stuffed with this terrible hail. In Herculaneum, where the 
flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled in, like 
a sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at its 
height — and that is what is called " the lava " here. 



MOUNT VESUVIUS 29 

Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the 
brink of which we now stand, looking down, when they 
came on some of the stone benches of the theatre — those 
steps (for such they seem) at the bottom of the excavation 
— and found the buried city of Herculaneum. Presently 
going down, with lighted torches, we are perplexed by great 
walls of monstrous thickness, rising up between the benches, 
shutting out the stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in 
absurd places, confusing the whole plan, and making it a 
disordered dream. We cannot, at first, believe, or picture 
to ourselves, that this came rolling in, and drowned the 
city ; and that all that is not here has been cut away, by 
the axe, like solid stone. But this perceived and under- 
stood, the horror and oppression of its presence are inde- 
scribable. 

Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless cham- 
bers of both cities, or carefully removed to the museum at 
Naples, are as fresh and plain as if they had been executed 
yesterday. Here are subjects of still life, as provisions, 
dead game, bottles, glasses, and the like ; familiar classical 
stories, or mythological fables, always forcibly and plainly 
told ; conceits of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working at 
trades; theatrical rehearsals; poets reading their produc- 
tions to their friends ; inscriptions chalked upon the walls ; 
political squibs, advertisements, rough drawings by school- 
boys ; everything to people and restore the ancient cities in 
the fancy of their wondering visitor. Furniture, too, you 
see, of every kind — lamps, tables, couches ; vessels for 
eating, drinking, and cooking; workmen's tools, surgical 



30 MOUNT VESUVIUS 

instruments, tickets for the theatre, pieces of money, 
personal ornaments, bunches of keys found clinched in 
the grasp of skeletons, helmets of guards and warriors ; 
little household bells, yet musical with their old domestic 
tones. 

The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the 
interests of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascina- 
tion. The looking, from either ruined city, into the 
neighbouring grounds overgrown with beautiful vines and 
luxuriant trees ; and remembering that house upon house, 
temple on temple, building after building, and street after 
street, are still lying underneath the roots of all the quiet 
cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the light of day ; is 
something so wonderful, so full of mystery, so captivating 
to the imagination, that one would think it would be para- 
mount, and yield to nothing else. To nothing but Ve- 
suvius; but the mountain is the genius of the scene. 
From every indication of the ruin it has worked, we look, 
again, with an absorbing interest to where its smoke is 
rising up into the sky. It is beyond us, as we thread the 
ruined streets : above us, as we stand upon the ruined 
walls; we follow it through every vista of broken columns, 
as we wander through the empty court-yards of the houses ; 
and through the garlandings and interlacings of every 
wanton vine. Turning away to Paestum yonder, to see 
the awful structures built, the least aged of them hundreds 
of years before the birth of Christ, and standing yet, erect 
in lonely majesty, upon the wild malaria-blighted plain — we 
watch Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, and 



MOUNT VESUVIUS 3 1 

watch for it again, on our return, with the same thrill of 
interest : as the doom and destiny of all this beautiful 
country, biding its terrible time. 

It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring day, 
when we return from Paastum, but very cold in the shade : 
insomuch, that although we may lunch pleasantly, at noon, 
in the open air, by the gate of Pompeii, the neighbouring 
rivulet supplies thick ice for our wine. But, the sun is 
shining brightly ; there is not a cloud or speck of vapour in 
the whole blue sky, looking down upon the Bay of Naples ; 
and the moon will be at the full to-night. No matter that 
the snow and ice lie thick upon the summit of Vesuvius, or 
that we have been on foot all day at Pompeii, or that 
croakers maintain that strangers should not be on the 
mountain by night, in such an unusual season. Let us 
take advantage of the fine weather; make the best of our 
way to Resina, the little village at the foot of the moun- 
tain; prepare ourselves, as well as we can on so short a 
notice, at the guide's house ; ascend at once, and have sun- 
set half-way up, moonlight at the top, and midnight to 
come down in ! 

At four o'clock in the afternoon there is a terrible uproar 
in the little stable-yard of Signore Salvatore, the recognized 
head-guide, with the gold band around his cap ; and thirty 
under-guides, who are all scuffling and screaming at once, 
are preparing half-a-dozen saddled ponies, three litters, and 
some stout staves for the journey. Every one of the thirty 
quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens the six 
ponies; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze 



32 MOUNT VESUVIUS 

itself into the little stable-yard participates in the tumult, 
and gets trodden on by the cattle. 

After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than 
would suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession 
starts. The head-guide, who is liberally paid for all the 
attendants, rides a little in advance of the party ; the other 
thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go forward with the 
litters that are to be used by and by ; and the remaining 
two-and-twenty beg. 

We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad 
flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, 
and the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon 
a bleak, bare region, where the lava lies confusedly in enor- 
mous rusty masses : as if the earth had been plowed up 
by burning thunder-bolts. And now we halt to see the sun 
set. The change that falls upon the dreary region, and on 
the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night 
comes on — and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness 
that reign around, who that has witnessed it can ever forget ! 

It is dark when, after winding for some time over the 
broken ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone : which is 
extremely steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, 
from the spot where we dismount. The only light is re- 
flected from the snow, deep, hard, and white, with which 
the cone is covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air 
is piercing. The thirty-one have brought no torches, 
knowing that the moon will rise before we reach the top. 
Two of the litters are devoted to the two ladies ; the third, 
to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples, whose hospitality 



MOUNT VESUVIUS 33 

and good nature have attached him to the expedition, and 
determined him to assist in doing the honours of the moun- 
tain. The rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen 
men; each of the ladies by half-a-dozen. We who walk 
make the best use of our staves ; and so the whole party 
begin to labour upward over the snow — as if they were 
toiling to the summit of an antediluvian Twelfth-cake. 

We are a long time toiling up ; and the head-guide looks 
oddly about him when one of the company — not an Italian, 
though an habitue of the mountain for many years : whom 
we will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici 
— suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing 
of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be 
difficult to descend. But the sight of the litters above, 
tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to that, as 
the bearers continually slip and tumble, diverts our atten- 
tion; more especially as the whole length of the rather 
heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us alarm- 
ingly foreshortened, with his head downward. 

The rising of the moon soon afterward, revives the flag- 
ging spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with 
their usual watchword, " Courage, friend ! It is to eat 
macaroni ! " they press on, gallantly, for the summit. 

From tingeing the top of the snow above us with a band 
of light, and pouring it in a stream through the valley be- 
low, while we have been ascending in the dark, the moon 
soon lights the whole white mountain-side, and the broad 
sea down below, and tiny Naples in the distance, and every 
village in the country round. The whole prospect is in 



34 MOUNT VESUVIUS 

this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the 
mountain-top — the region of Fire — an exhausted crater 
formed of great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of 
stone from some tremendous waterfall, burned up; from 
every chink and crevice of which hot, sulphurous smoke is 
pouring out : while, from another conical-shaped hill, the 
present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, 
great sheets of fire are streaming forth : reddening the night 
with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with 
red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the air like 
feathers, and fall down like lead. What words can paint 
the gloom and grandeur of this scene ! 

The broken ground ; the smoke ; the sense of suffocation 
from the sulphur; the fear of falling down through the 
crevices in the yawning ground ; the stopping, every now 
and then, for somebody who is missing in the dark (for the 
dense smoke now obscures the moon) ; the intolerable noise 
of the thirty ; and the hoarse roaring of the mountain ; 
make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that 
we reel again. But, dragging the ladies through it, and 
across another exhausted crater to the foot of the present 
Volcano, we approach close to it on the windy side, and 
then sit down among the hot ashes at its foot, and look up 
in silence ; faintly estimating the action that is going on 
within, from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this 
minute, than it was six weeks ago. 

There is something in the fire and roar that generates an 
irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long, 
without starting off, two of us, on our hands and knees, 



MOUNT VESUVIUS 35 

accompanied by the head-guide, to climb to the brim of the 
flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile, the thirty 
yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding, 
and call to us to come back ; frightening the rest of the 
party out of their wits. 

What with their noise, and what with the trembling of 
the thin crust of ground, that seems about to open under- 
neath our feet, and plunge us into the burning gulf below 
(which is the real danger, if there be any) ; and what with 
the flashing of the fire in our faces, and the shower of red- 
hot ashes that is raining down, and the choking smoke and 
sulphur ; we may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken 
men. But, we contrive to climb up to the brim, and look 
down, for a moment, into the Hell of boiling fire below. 
Then, we all three come rolling down ; blackened, and 
singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy : and each with 
his dress alight in half-a-dozen places. 

You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of 
descending is by sliding down the ashes : which, forming a 
gradually increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid 
a descent. But, when we have crossed the two exhausted 
craters on our way back, and are come to this precipitous 
place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of 
ashes to be seen ; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice. 

In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously 
join hands, and make a chain of men ; of whom the fore- 
most beat, as well as they can, a rough track with their 
sticks, down which we prepare to follow. The way being 
fearfully steep, and none of the party : even of the thirty : 



36 MOUNT VESUVIUS 

being able to keep their feet for six paces together, the 
ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, each be- 
tween two careful persons ; while others of the thirty hold 
by their skirts, to prevent their falling forward — a necessary 
precaution, tending to the immediate and hopeless dilapida- 
tion of their apparel. The rather heavy gentleman is ad- 
jured to leave his litter too, and be escorted in a similar 
manner; but he resolves to be brought down as he was 
brought up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not 
likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer so than 
trusting to his own legs. 

In this order, we begin the descent : sometimes on foot, 
sometimes shuffling on the ice : always proceeding much 
more quietly and slowly than on our upward way : and 
constantly alarmed by the falling among us of somebody 
from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole party, 
and clings pertinaciously to anybody's ankles. It is im- 
possible for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track has 
to be made; and its appearance behind us, overhead — with 
some one or other of the bearers always down, and the 
rather heavy gentleman with his legs in the air — is very 
threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus; a very 
little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and 
regarding it as a great success — and have all fallen several 
times, and have all been stopped, somehow or other, as we 
were sliding away — when Mr. Pickle, of Portici, in the act 
of remarking on these uncommon circumstances as quite 
beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, disengages himself 
with quick presence of mind, from those about him, plunges 



MOUNT VESUVIUS 37 

away head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the 
whole surface of the cone ! 

Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help 
him, I see him there, in the moonlight — I have had such a 
dream often — skimming over the white ice like a cannon- 
ball. Almost at the same moment, there is a cry from be- 
hind ; and a man who has carried a light basket of spare 
cloaks on his head, comes rolling past at the same frightful 
speed, closely followed by a boy. At this climax of the 
chapter of accidents, the remaining eight-and-twenty vocif- 
erate to that degree, that a pack of wolves would be music 
to them ! 

Giddy and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle 
of Portici when we reach the place where we dismounted, 
and where the horses are waiting ; but, thank God, sound 
in limb ! And never are we likely to be more glad to see a 
man alive, and on his feet, than to see him now — making 
light of it too, though sorely bruised and in great pain. 
The boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, 
while we are at supper, with his head tied up ; and the man 
is heard of some hours afterwards. He, too, is bruised and 
stunned, but has broken no bones ; the snow having, for- 
tunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock and stone, 
and rendered them harmless. 

After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing 
fire, we again take horse, and continue our descent to 
Salvatore's house — very slowly, by reason of our bruised 
friend being hardly able to keep the saddle, or endure the 
pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, or early 



38 MOUNT VESUVIUS 

in the morning, all the people of the village are waiting 
about the little stable-yard when we arrive, and looking up 
the road by which we are expected. Our appearance is 
hailed with a great clamour of tongues, and a general sensa- 
tion, for which, in our modesty, we are somewhat at a loss 
to account, until turning into the yard, we find that one of a 
party of French gentlemen, who were on the mountain at 
the same time, is lying on some straw in the stable with a 
broken limb ; looking like Death and suffering great tor- 
ture ; and that we were confidently supposed to have en- 
countered some worse accident. 

So " well returned and Heaven be praised ! " as the 
cheerful Vetturino, who has borne us company all the way 
from Pisa says with all his heart ! And away with his 
ready horses into sleeping Naples ! 

It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo 
singers and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, 
and universal degradation ; airing its Harlequin suit in the 
sunshine, next day and every day ; singing, starving, danc- 
ing, gaming on the seashore ; and leaving all labour to the 
burning mountain, which is ever at its work. 

Pictures from Italy (London, 1845). 



THE FALLS OF THE RHINE 

VICTOR HUGO 

MY friend, what shall I say to you ? I have just 
come from seeing that strange thing. I am only 
a few steps from it. I hear the noise of it. I am writing 
to you without knowing what falls from my thoughts. 
Ideas and images accumulate there pell-mell, hastening, 
jostling and bruising each other, and disappearing in vapour, 
in foam, in uproar, and in clouds. 

Within me there is an immense ebullition. It seems to 
me that I have the Falls of the Rhine in my brain. 

I write at random, just as it comes. You must under- 
stand if you can. 

You arrive at Laufen. It is a castle of the Thirteenth 
Century, a very beautiful pile and of a very good style. 
At the door there are two gilded wy verns with open mouths. 
They are roaring. You would say that they are making 
the mysterious noise you hear. 

You enter. 

You are in the courtyard of a castle. It is no longer a 
castle, it is a farm. Hens, geese, turkeys, dirt; a cart in a 
corner; and a vat of lime. A door opens. The cascade 
appears. 

Marvellous spectacle ! 

Frightful tumult ! That is the first effect. Then you 



4-0 THE FALLS OF THE RHINE 

look about you. The cataract cuts out the gulfs which it 
fills with large white sheets. As in a conflagration, there 
are some little peaceful spots in the midst of this object of 
terror; groves blended with foam; charming brooks in the 
mosses ; fountains for the Arcadian Shepherds of Poussin, 
shadowed by little boughs gently agitated. — And then these 
details vanish, and the impression of the whole returns to 
you. Eternal tempest ! Snow, vital and furious. The 
water is of a strange transparency. Some black rocks pro- 
duce sinister aspects under the water. They appear to 
touch the surface and are ten feet down. Below the two 
principal leaps of the falls two great sheaves of foam spread 
themselves upon the river and disperse in green clouds. 
On the other side of the Rhine, I perceive a tranquil group 
of little houses, where the housekeepers come and go. 

As I am observing, my guide tells me : " Lake Con- 
stance froze in the winter of 1829 and 1830. It had not 
frozen for a hundred and four years. People crossed it in 
carriages. Poor people were frozen to death in SchafF- 
hausen." 

I descended a little lower towards the abyss. The sky 
was grey and veiled. The cascade roared like a tiger. 
Frightful noise, terrible rapidity ! Dust of water, smoke 
and rain at the same time. Through this mist you see the 
cataract in its full development. Five large rocks cut it 
into five sheets of water of diverse aspects and different 
sizes. You believe you see the five worn piers of a bridge 
of Titans. In the winter the ice forms blue arches upon 
these black abutments. 



THE FALLS OF THE RHINE 4 1 

The nearest of these rocks is of a strange form ; it seems 
as if the water issued full of rage from the hideous and im- 
passive head of an Hindu idol with an elephant's head. 
Some trees and brambles, which intermingle at its summit, 
give it bristling and horrible hair. 

At the most awe-inspiring point of the Falls, a great rock 
disappears and reappears under the foam like the skull of 
an engulfed giant, beaten for six thousand years by this 
dreadful shower-bath. 

The guide continues his monologue: "The Falls of 
the Rhine are one league from Schaffhausen. The whole 
mass of the river falls there at a height of seventy feet." — 

The rugged path which descends from the castle of 
Laufen to the abyss crosses a garden. At the moment 
when I passed, deafened by the formidable cataract, a child, 
accustomed to living with this marvel of the world, was 
playing among the flowers. 

This path has several barriers, where you pay a trifle 
from time to time. The poor cataract should not work for 
nothing. See the trouble it gives ! It is very necessary 
that with all the foam that it throws upon the trees, the 
rocks, the river, and the clouds, that it should throw a few 
sous into the pocket of some one. That is the least it can 
do. 

I came along this path until I reached a kind of balcony 
skilfully poised in reality right over the abyss. 

There, everything moves you at once. You are dazzled, 
made dizzy, confused, terrified, and charmed. You lean 
on a wooden rail that trembles. Some yellow trees, — it is 



42 THE FALLS OF THE RHINE 

autumn, — and some red quick-trees surround a little pa- 
vilion in the style of the Cafe Turc, from which one ob- 
serves the horror of the thing. The women cover them- 
selves with an oil-skin (each one costs a franc). You are 
suddenly enveloped in a terrible, thundering and heavy 
shower. 

Some pretty little yellow snails crawl voluptuously over 
this dew on the rail of the balcony. The rock that slopes 
beyond the balcony weeps drop by drop into the cascade. 
Upon this rock, which is in the centre of the cataract, a 
troubadour-knight of painted wood stands leaning upon a 
red shield with a white cross. Some man certainly risked 
his life to plant this doubtful ornament in the midst of 
Jehovah's grand and eternal poetry. 

The two giants, who lift up their heads, I should say the 
two largest rocks, seem to speak. The thunder is their 
voice. Above an alarming mound of foam you see a peace- 
ful little house with its little orchard. You would say that 
this terrible hydra is condemned to carry eternally upon his 
back that sweet and happy cabin. 

I went to the extremity of the balcony ; I leaned against 
the rock. The sight became still more terrible. It was a 
frightful descent of water. The hideous and splendid 
abyss angrily throws a shower of pearls in the face of those 
who dare to regard it so near. That is admirable. The 
four great heaps of the cataract fall, mount, and fall again 
without ceasing. You would believe that you were be- 
holding the four lightning-wheels of the storm-chariot. 

The wooden bridge was laid under water. The boards 



THE FALLS OF THE RHINE 43 

were slippery. Some dead leaves quivered under my feet. 
In a cleft of the rock, I noticed a little tuft of dried grass. 
Dry under the cataract of Schaffhausen ! in this deluge, it 
missed every drop of water ! There are some hearts that 
may be likened to this tuft of grass. In the midst of a 
vortex of human prosperity, they wither of themselves. 
Alas ! this drop of water which they have missed and 
which springs not forth from the earth but falls from 
heaven, is Love ! 

How long did I remain there, absorbed in that grand 
spectacle ? I could not possibly tell you. During that 
contemplation the hours passed in my spirit like the waves 
in the abyss, without leaving a trace or memory. 

However, some one came to inform me that the day was 
declining. I climbed up to the castle and from there I de- 
scended to the sandy shore whence you cross the Rhine to 
gain the right bank. This shore is below the Falls, and 
you cross the river at a few fathoms from the cataract. 
To accomplish this, you risk yourself in a little boat, 
charming, light, exquisite, adjusted like the canoe of a 
savage, constructed of wood as supple as the skin of a 
shark, solid, elastic, fibrous, grazing the rocks every instant 
and hardly escaping — being managed like all the small boats 
of the Rhine and the Meuse with a hook and an oar in the 
form of a shovel. Nothing is stranger than to feel in this 
little boat the deep and thunderous shocks of the water. 

As the bark moved away from the bank, I looked above 
my head at the- battlements covered with tiles and the sharp 
gable ends of the chateau that dominates the precipice. 



44 "THE FALLS OF THE RHINE 

Some fishermen's nets were drying up on the stones on the 
bank of the river. Do they fish in this vortex ? Yes, 
Without doubt. As the fish cannot leap over the cataract, 
many salmon are caught here. Moreover, where is the 
whirlpool in which man will not fish ? 

Now I will recapitulate my intense and almost poignant 
sensations. First impression : you do not know what to 
say, you are crushed as by all great poems. Then the 
whole unravels itself. The beauties disengage themselves 
from the cloud. Altogether it is grand, sombre, terrible, 
hideous, magnificent, unutterable. 

On the other side of the Rhine, the Falls are made to 
turn mill-wheels. 

Upon one bank, the castle ; upon the other, the village, 
which is called Neuhausen. 

It is a remarkable thing that each of the great Alpine 
rivers, on leaving the mountains, has the colour of the sea 
to which it flows. The Rhone, escaping from the Lake 
of Geneva, is blue like the Mediterranean ; the Rhine, 
issuing from Lake Constance, is green like the ocean. 

Unfortunately the sky was overcast. I cannot, there- 
fore, say that I saw the Falls of Laufen in all their splen- 
dour. Nothing is richer nor more marvellous than that 
shower of pearls of which I have already told you. This 
should be, however, even more wonderful when the sun 
changes these pearls to diamonds and when the rainbow 
plunges its emerald neck into the foam like a divine bird 
that comes to drink in the abyss. 

From the other side of the Rhine, whence I am now 



THE FALLS OF THE RHINE 45 

writing, the cataract appears in its entirety, divided into 
five very distinct parts, each of which has its physiognomy 
quite apart from the others, and forming a kind of cres- 
cendo. The first is an overflowing from a mill ; the sec- 
ond, almost symmetrically composed by the work of the 
wave and time, is a fountain of Versailles ; the third, a cas- 
cade ; the fourth, an avalanche ; and the fifth, chaos. 

A last word and I will close this letter. Several paces 
from the Falls, you explore a calcareous rock, which is very 
beautiful. In the midst of one of the quarries that are 
there a galley-slave, in stripes of grey and black, with pick- 
axe in his hand and a double chain on his feet, looked at 
the cataract. Chance seems to delight itself sometimes in 
placing in antitheses, sometimes sad and sometimes terrible, 
the work of nature and the work of society. 

Le Rbin (Paris, 1846), 



IN ARCTIC SEAS 

LORD DUFFERIN 

EVER since leaving England, as each four-and-twenty 
hours we climbed up nearer to the pole, the belt of 
dusk dividing day from day had been growing narrower 
and narrower, until having nearly reached the Arctic circle, 
this, — the last night we were to traverse, — had dwindled to 
a thread of shadow. Only another half-dozen leagues 
more, and we would stand on the threshold of a four 
months' day ! For the few preceding hours, clouds had 
completely covered the heavens, except where a clear in- 
terval of sky, that lay along the northern horizon, prom- 
ised a glowing stage for the sun's last obsequies. But like 
the heroes of old he had veiled his face to die, and it was 
not until he dropped down to the sea that the whole hemis- 
phere overflowed with glory and the gilded pageant con- 
certed for his funeral gathered in slow procession round his 
grave ; reminding one of those tardy honours paid to some 
great prince of song, who — left during life to languish in a 
garret — is buried by nobles in Westminster Abbey. A 
few minutes more the last fiery segment had disappeared 
beneath the purple horizon, and all was over. 

" The king is dead — the king is dead — the king is dead ! 
Long live the king ! " And up from the sea that had just 



IN ARCTIC SEAS 47 

entombed his sire, rose the young monarch of a new day ; 
while the courtier clouds, in their ruby robes, turned faces 
still aglow with the favours of their dead lord, to borrow 
brighter blazonry from the smile of a new master. 

A fairer or a stranger spectacle than the last Arctic sun- 
set cannot be well conceived. Evening and morning — 
like kinsmen whose hearts some baseless feud has kept 
asunder — clasping hands across the shadow of the vanished 
night. 

You must forgive me if sometimes I become a little mag- 
niloquent; for really, amid the grandeur of that fresh pri- 
maeval world, it was almost impossible to prevent one's im- 
agination from absorbing a dash of the local colouring. We 
seemed to have suddenly waked up among the colossal 
scenery of Keats's Hyperion. The pulses of young Titans 
beat within our veins. Time itself, — no longer frittered 
down into paltry divisions, — had assumed a more majestic 
aspect. We had the appetite of giants, — was it unnatural 
we should also adopt "the large utterance of the early 
gods " ? 

About 3 a. m. it cleared up a little. By breakfast- 
time the sun reappeared, and we could see five or six miles 
ahead of the vessel. It was shortly after this, that as I was 
standing in the main rigging peering out over the smooth 
blue surface of the sea, a white twinkling point of light 
suddenly caught my eye about a couple of miles off on the 
port bow, which a telescope soon resolved into a solitary 
isle of ice, dancing and dipping in the sunlight. As you 
may suppose, the news brought everybody upon deck ; and 



48 IN ARCTIC SEAS 

when almost immediately afterwards a string of other pieces 
— glittering like a diamond necklace — hove in sight, the 
excitement was extreme. 

Here, at all events, was honest blue salt water frozen 
solid, and when — as we proceeded — the scattered fragments 
thickened, and passed like silver argosies on either hand, 
until at last we found ourselves enveloped in an innumerable 
fleet of bergs, — it seemed as if we could never be weary of 
admiring a sight so strange and beautiful. It was rather in 
form and colour than in size that these ice islets were re- 
markable; anything approaching to a real iceberg we 
neither saw, nor are we likely to see. In fact, the lofty 
ice mountains that wander like vagrant islands along the 
coast of America, seldom or never come to the eastward or 
northward of Cape Farewell. They consist of land ice, 
and are all generated among the bays and straits within 
Baffin's Bay, and first enter the Atlantic a good deal to the 
southward of Iceland ; whereas the Polar ice, among which 
we have been knocking about, is field ice, and — except 
when packed one ledge above another, by great pressure — 
is comparatively flat. I do not think I saw any pieces that 
were piled up higher than thirty or thirty-five feet above the 
sea-level, although at a little distance through the mist they 
may have loomed much loftier. 

In quaintness of form, and in brilliancy of colours, these 
wonderful masses surpassed everything I had imagined ; 
and we found endless amusement in watching their fantastic 
procession. 

At one time it was a knight on horseback, clad in sap- 



IN ARCTIC SEAS 49 

phire mail, a white plume above his casque. Or a cathe- 
dral window with shafts of chrysophras, new powdered by 
a snowstorm. Or a smooth sheer cliff of lapis lazuli ; or 
a Banyan tree, with roots descending from its branches, 
and a foliage as delicate as the efflorescence of molten 
metal ; or a fairy dragon, that breasted the water in scales 
of emerald ; or anything else that your fancy chose to con- 
jure up. After a little time, the mist again descended on 
the scene, and dulled each glittering form to a shapeless 
mass of white ; while in spite of all our endeavours to keep 
upon our northerly course, we were constantly compelled 
to turn and wind about in every direction — sometimes 
standing on for several hours at a stretch to the southward 
and eastward. 

But why should I weary you with the detail of our vari- 
ous manoeuvres during the ensuing days ? they were too 
tedious and disheartening at the time for me to look back 
at them with any pleasure. Suffice it to say, that by dint 
of sailing north whenever the ice would permit us, and 
sailing west when we could not sail north, — we found our- 
selves on the 2d of August, in the latitude of the southern 
extremity of Spitzbergen, though divided from the land by 
about fifty miles of ice. All this while the weather had 
been pretty good, foggy and cold enough, but with a fine 
stiff breeze that rattled us along at a good rate whenever 
we did get a chance of making any Northirig. But lately 
it had come on to blow very hard, the cold became quite 
piercing, and what was worse — in every direction round the 
whole circuit of the horizon, except along its southern seg- 



50 IN ARCTIC SEAS 

ment, — a blaze of iceblink illuminated the sky. A more 
discouraging spectacle could not have met our eyes. The 
iceblink is a luminous appearance, reflected on the heavens 
from the fields of ice that still lie sunk beneath the horizon ; 
it was therefore on this occasion an unmistakable indication 
of the encumbered state of the sea in front of us. 

I had turned in for a few hours of rest, and release from 
the monotonous sense of disappointment, and was already 
lost in a dream of deep bewildering bays of ice, and gulfs 
whose shifting shores offered to the eye every possible com- 
bination of uncomfortable scenery, without possible issue > 
— when "a voice in my dreaming ear" shouted "Land!" 
and I awoke to its reality. I need not tell you in what double 
quick time I tumbled up the companion,— or with what 
greediness I feasted my eyes on that longed-for view, — the 
only sight — as I then thought — we were ever distined to 
enjoy of the mountains of Spitzbergen ! 

The whole heaven was overcast with a dark mantle of 
tempestuous clouds, that stretched down in umbrella-like 
points towards the horizon, leaving a clear space between 
their edge and the sea, illuminated by the sinister brilliancy 
of the iceblink. In an easterly direction, this belt of un- 
clouded atmosphere was etherealized to an indescribable 
transparency, and up into it there gradually grew — above 
the dingy line of starboard ice — a forest of thin lilac peaks, 
so faint, so pale, that had it not been for the gem-like dis- 
tinctness of their outline, one could have deemed them as 
unsubstantial as the spires of fairyland. The beautiful vision 
proved only too transient ; in one short half hour mist and 



IN ARCTIC SEAS 5 1 

cloud had blotted it all out, while a fresh barrier of ice 
compelled us to turn our backs on the very land we were 
striving to reach. 

It was one o'clock in the morning of the 6th of August, 
1856, that after having been eleven days at sea, we came 
to an anchor in the silent haven of English Bay, Spitzbergen. 

And now, how shall I give you an idea of the wonderful 
panorama in the midst of which we found ourselves ? I 
think, perhaps, its most striking feature was the stillness — 
and deadness — and impossibility of this new world ; ice, and 
rock, and water surrounded us ; not a sound of any kind 
interrupted the silence ; the sea did not break upon the 
shore ; no bird or any living thing was visible ; the mid- 
night sun — by this time muffled in a transparent mist — shed 
an awful, mysterious lustre on glacier and mountain ; no 
atom of vegetation gave token of the earth's vitality ; an 
universal numbness and dumbness seemed to pervade the 
solitude. I suppose in scarcely any other part of the world 
is this appearance of deadness so strikingly exhibited. 

On the stillest summer day in England, there is always 
perceptible an undertone of life thrilling through the atmos- 
phere ; and though no breeze should stir a single leaf, yet — 
in default of motion — there is always a sense of growth ; 
but here not so much as a blade of grass was to be seen, on 
the sides of the bald, excoriated hills. Primeval rocks — 
and eternal ice — constitute the landscape. 

Letters from High Latitudes (London, 1859). 



IN ANTARCTIC SEAS 

W. G. BURN MURDOCH 

L AYS such as this are few in a lifetime, so full of 
interest has it been, and so fatiguing. Since early 
morning, rather since yesterday, for there was no night and 
no morning, we have been constantly marvelling at most 
astonishing and beautiful spectacles. We have been bathed 
in red blood, and for hours and hours we have rowed in the 
boats and plunged over miles of soft snow dragging seal- 
skins, and I have been drawing hard in the times between 
the boat excursions ; but the air is exhilarating, and we feel 
equal to almost any amount of work. Sun and snow- 
showers alternate — fine hard snow it is, that makes our 
faces burn as if before, a fire. It is very cold sketching, 
and incidents and effects follow each other so rapidly that 
there is time to make little more than mental notes. 

Christmas Eve. 

Those who have felt the peace of a summer night in 
Norway or Iceland, where the day sleeps with wide-open 
eyes, can fancy the quiet beauty of such a night among the 
white floes of the Antarctic. 

To-day has passed, glistering in silky white, decked 
with sparkling jewels of blue and green, and we thought 
surely we had seen the last of Nature's white harmonies ; 



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IN ANTARCTIC SEAS 53 

then evening came, pensive and soothing and grey, and all 
the white world changed into soft violet, pale yellow, and 
rose. 

A dreamy stillness fills the air. To the south the sun 
has dipped behind a bank of pale grey cloud, and the sky 
above is touched with primrose light. Far to the north the 
dark, smooth sea is bounded by two low bergs, that stretch 
across the horizon. The nearest is cold violet white, and 
the sunlight strikes the furthest, making it shine like a wall 
of gold. The sky above them is of a leaden peacock blue, 
with rosy cloudlets hanging against it — such colouring as I 
have never before seen or heard described. To the west- 
ward, across the gulf, we can just distinguish the blue-black 
crags jutting from the snowy lomonds. Little clouds 
touched with gold and rose lie nestling in the black corries, 
and gather round the snowy peaks. To the south, in the 
centre of the floe, some bergs lie, cold and grey in the 
shadow of the bank of cloud. They look like Greek 
temples imprisoned forever in a field of snow. A faint cold 
air comes stealing to us over the floe ; it ripples the yellow 
sky reflection at the ice-edge for a moment, and falls away. 
In the distance a seal is barking — a low muffled sound that 
travels far over the calm water, and occasionally a slight 
splash breaks the silence, as a piece of snow separates from 
the field and joins its companion pieces that are floating 
quietly past our stern to the north, — a mysterious, silent 
procession of soft, white spirits, each perfectly reflected in 
the lavender sea. 

Nature sleeps — breathlessly — silent; perhaps she dreams 



54 IN ANTARCTIC SEAS 

of the spirit-world, that seems to draw so close to her on 
such a night. 

By midnight the tired crew were all below and sound 
asleep in their stuffy bunks. But the doctor and I found 
it impossible to leave the quiet decks and the mysterious 
daylight, so we prowled about and brewed coffee in the de- 
serted galley. Then we watched the sun pass behind the 
grey bergs in the south for a few seconds, and appear again, 
refreshed, with a cool silvery light. A few flakes of snow 
floated in the clear, cold air, and two snowy petrels, white 
as the snow itself, flitted along the ice-edge. 

A cold, dreamy, white Christmas morning, — beautiful 
beyond expression. 

From Edinburgh to the Antarctic — An Artist 's Notes and 
Sketches during the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of i8g2-J 
(London, 1894). 



THE DESERT OF SAHARA 

EUGENE FROMENTIN 

THE Saharans adore their country, 1 and, for my part, I 
should come very near justifying a sentiment so im- 
passioned, especially when it is mingled with the attach- 
ment to one's native soil. . . . It is a land without 
grace or softness, but it is severe, which is not an evil 
though its first effect is to make one serious — an effect that 
many people confound with weariness. A great land of 
hills expiring in a still greater flat land bathed in eternal 
light ; empty and desolate enough, to give the idea of that 
surprising thing called the desert ; with a sky almost always 

1 The word Sahara does not necessarily convey the idea of a desert im- 
mensity. Inhabited at certain points, it is called Fiafi ; habitable at cer- 
tain others, it takes the name of Kifar, a word whose signification is the 
same as that of the common word Khela, abandoned ; habitable and in- 
habited at yet other points, it is called Falat. 

These three words represent each of the characteristics of the Sahara. 

Fiafi is the oasis where life retires, about the fountains and wells, under 
the palms and fruit trees, sheltered from the sun and chaub (simoon). 

Kifar is the sandy and void plain, which, however, when fertilized for 
a moment by the winter rains, is covered with grass (a' cheb) in the spring; 
and the nomadic tribes that ordinarily camp around the oases go thither 
to pasture their flocks. 

Falat, finally, is the sterile and bare immensity, the sea of sand, whose 
eternal billows, to-day agitated by the choub, to-morrow will lie in motion- 
less heaps ; — the sea that is slowly ploughed by those fleets called caravans. 
— General Daumas, Le Sahara Algerien. 



56 THE DESERT OF SAHARA 

the same, silence, and on all sides a tranquil horizon. In 
the centre a kind of lost city, surrounded by solitude ; then 
a little verdure, sandy islets, and, lastly, a few reefs of 
whitish calcareous stone or black schists on the margin of 
an expanse that resembles the sea ; — in all this, but little 
variety, few accidents, few novelties, unless it be the sun 
that rises over the desert and sinks behind the hills, ever 
calm, rayless but devouring ; or perhaps the banks of sand 
that have changed their place and form under the last wind 
from the South. Brief dawns, longer noons that are heav- 
ier than elsewhere, and scarcely any twilight ; sometimes a 
sudden expansion of light and warmth with burning winds 
that momentarily give the landscape a menacing physiog- 
nomy and that may then produce crushing sensations ; but 
more usually a radiant immobility, the somewhat mournful 
fixity of fine weather, in short, a kind of impassibility that 
seems to have fallen from the sky upon lifeless things and 
from them to have passed into human faces. 

The first impression received from this ardent and inani- 
mate picture, composed of sun, expanse, and solitude, is 
acute and cannot be compared with any other. However, 
little by little, the eye grows accustomed to the grandeur of 
the lines, the emptiness of the space, and the nakedness of 
the earth, and if one is still astonished at anything, it is at 
still remaining sensible to such slightly changing effects 
and at being so deeply stirred by what are in reality the 
most simple sights. 

Here the sky is clear, arid, and unchanging ; it comes in 
contact with fawn-coloured or white ground, and maintains 



THE DESERT OF SAHARA $J 

a frank blue in its utmost extent ; and when it puts on 
gold opposite the setting sun its base is violet and almost 
leaden-hued. I have not seen any beautiful mirages. Ex- 
cept during the sirocco, the horizon is always distinctly 
visible and detached from the sky ; there is only a final 
streak of ash-blue which is vigorously defined in the morn- 
ing, but in the middle of the day is somewhat confounded 
with the sky and seems to tremble in the fluidity of the at- 
mosphere. Directly to the South, a great way off towards 
M'zab, an irregular line formed by groves of tamarinds is 
visible. A faint mirage, that is produced every day in this 
part of the desert, makes these groves appear nearer and 
larger ; but the illusion is not very striking and one needs 
to be told in order to notice it. 

Shortly after sunrise the whole country is rosy, a vivid 
rose, with depths of peach colour; the town is spotted 
with points of shadow, and some little white argils, scat- 
tered along the edge of the palms, gleam gaily enough in 
this mournful landscape which for a short moment of fresh- 
ness seems to smile at the rising sun. In the air are vague 
sounds and a suggestion of singing that makes us under- 
stand that every country in the world has its joyous awak- 
ening. 

Then, almost at the same moment every day, from the 
south we hear the approach of innumerable twitterings of 
birds. They are the gangas coming from the desert to 
drink at the springs. . . . It is then half-past six. 
One hour later and the same cries suddenly arise in the 
north ; the same flocks pass over my head one by one, in 



58 THE DESERT OF SAHARA 

the same numbers and order, and regain their desert plains. 
One might say that the morning is ended ; and the sole 
smiling hour of the day has passed between the going and 
returning of the gangas. The landscape that was rose has 
already become dun ; the town has far fewer little shad- 
ows ; it greys as the sun gets higher ; in proportion as it 
shines brighter the desert seems to darken ; the hills alone 
remain rosy. If there was any wind it dies away ; warm 
exhalations begin to spread in the air as if they were from 
the sands. Two hours later all movement ceases at once, 
and noontide commences. 

The sun mounts and is finally directly over my head. I 
have only the narrow shelter of my parasol and there I 
gather myself together ; my feet rest in the sand or on 
glittering stones ; my pad curls up beside me under the 
sun ; my box of colours crackles like burning wood. Not 
a sound is heard now. There are four hours of incredible 
calm and stupor. The town sleeps below me then dumb 
and looking like a mass of violet with its empty terraces 
upon which the sun illumines a multitude of screens full 
of little rose apricots, exposed there to dry ; — here and 
there a black hole marks a window, or an interior door, and 
fine lines of dark violet show that there are only one or 
two strips of shadow in the whole town. A fillet of 
stronger light that edges the contour of the terraces helps 
us to distinguish these mud edifices from one another, piled 
as they are rather than built upon their three hills. 

On all sides of the town extends the oasis, also dumb 
and slumbrous under the heavy heat of the day. It looks 



THE DESERT OF SAHARA 59 

quite small and presses close against the two flanks of the 
town with an air of wanting to defend it at need rather 
than to entice it. I can see the whole of it : it resembles 
two squares of leaves enveloped by a long wall like a park, 
roughly drawn upon the sterile plain. Although divided by 
compartments into a multitude of little orchards, also all 
enclosed within walls, seen from this height it looks like a 
green tablecloth ; no tree is distinguishable, two stages of 
forest only can be remarked : the first, round-headed 
clumps ; the second, clusters of palms. At intervals some 
meagre patches of barley, only the stubble of which now 
remains, form shorn spaces of brilliant yellow amid the 
foliage ; elsewhere in rare glades a dry, powdery, and ash- 
coloured ground shows. Finally, on the south side, a few 
mounds of sand, heaped by the wind, have passed over the 
surrounding wall ; it is the desert trying to invade the gar- 
dens. The trees do not move ; in the forest thickets we 
divine certain sombre gaps in which birds may be supposed 
to be hidden, sleeping until their second awakening in the 
evening. 

This is also the hour when the desert is transformed into 
an obscure plain. The sun, suspended over its centre, in- 
scribes upon it a circle of light the equal rays of which fall 
full upon it in all ways and everywhere at the same time. 
There is no longer any clearness or shadow ; the perspec- 
tive indicated by the fleeting colours almost ceases to meas- 
ure distances ; everything is covered with a brown tone, 
continuous without streaks or mixture ; there are fifteen or 
twenty leagues of country as uniform and flat as a flooring. 



60 THE DESERT OF SAHARA 

It seems that the most minute salient object should be visi- 
ble upon it, and yet the eye discerns nothing there ; one 
could not even say now where there is sand, earth, or stony 
places, and the immobility of this solid sea then becomes 
more striking than ever. On seeing it start at our feet and 
then stretch away and sink towards the South, the East, and 
the West without any traced route or inflexion, we ask our- 
selves what may be this silent land clothed in a doubtful 
tone that seems the colour of the void ; whence no one 
comes, whither no one goes, and which ends in so straight 
and clear a strip against the sky; — we do not know; we 
feel that it does not end there and that it is, so to speak, 
only the entrance to the high sea. 

Then add to all these reveries the fame of the names we 
have seen upon the map, of places that we know to be there, 
in such or such direction, at five, ten, twenty, fifty days' 
march, some known, others only indicated and yet others 
more and more obscure. . . . Then the negro country, 
the edge of which we only know; two or three names of 
towns with a capital for a kingdom ; lakes, forests, a great 
sea on the left, perhaps great rivers, extraordinary inclemen- 
cies under the equator, strange products, monstrous animals, 
hairy sheep, elephants, and what then ? Nothing more 
distinct; unknown distances, an uncertainty, an enigma. 
Before me I have the beginning of this enigma and the 
spectacle is strange beneath this clear noonday sun. Here 
is where I should like to see the Egyptian Sphinx. 

It is vain to gaze around, far or near ; no moving thing 
can be distinguished. Sometimes by chance, a little convoy 



THE DESERT OF SAHARA 6 1 

of laden camels appears, like a row of blackish points, slowly 
mounting the sandy slopes ; we only perceive them when 
they reach the foot of the hills. They are travellers ; who 
are they ? whence come they ? Without our perceiving 
them, they have crossed the whole horizon beneath our 
eyes. Or perhaps it is a spout of sand which suddenly de- 
taches itself from the surface like a fine smoke, rises into a 
spiral, traverses a certain space bending under the wind and 
then evaporates after a few seconds. 

The day passes slowly ; it ends as it began with half red- 
nesses, an amber sky, depths assuming colour, long oblique 
flames which will empurple the mountains, the sands and the 
eastern rocks in their turn ; shadows take possession of that 
side of the land that has been fatigued by the heat during the 
first half of the day ; everything seems to be somewhat com- 
forted. The sparrows and turtle-doves begin to sing among 
the palms ; there is a movement as of resurrection in the town ; 
people show themselves on the terraces and come to shake 
the sieves ; the voices of animals are heard in the squares, 
horses neighing as they are taken to water and camels bel- 
lowing ; the desert looks like a plate of gold ; the sun sinks 
over the violet mountains and the night makes ready to fall. 

Un Et'e dans le Sahara (Paris, 1857). 



FINGAL'S CAVE 

SIR WALTER SCOTT 

July 19, l8lO. 

YESTERDAY we visited Staffa and Iona: the for- 
mer is one of the most extraordinary places I ever 
beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had 
heard of it ; or rather, the appearance of the cavern, com- 
posed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathe- 
dral, 1 and the running deep into the rock, eternally swept 
by a deep and swelling sea, and paved as it were with ruddy 

1 " that wondrous dome, 



Where, as to shame the temples deck'd 
By skill of earthly architect, 
Nature herself, it seem'd, would raise, 
A minster to her Maker's praise ! 
Not for a meaner use ascend 
Her columns, or her arches bend ; 
Nor of a theme less solemn tells 
That mighty surge that ebbs and swells, 
And still, beneath each awful pause 
From the high vault an answer draws, 
In varied tone prolonged and high 
That mocks the organ's melody. 
Nor doth its entrance front in vain 
To old Iona's holy fane, 
That Nature's voice might seem to say, 
' Well hast thou done, frail Child of clay ! 
Thy humble powers that stately shrine 
Task'd high and hard — but witness mine ! ' " 

Lord of the Isles. Canto IV. St. IO. 



FINGAL'S CAVE 63 

marble, baffles all description. You can walk along the 
broken pillars, with some difficulty, and in some places with 
a little danger, as far as the farthest extremity. Boats also 
can come in below when the sea is placid, — which is sel- 
dom the case. I had become a sort of favourite with the 
Hebridean boatmen, I suppose from my anxiety about their 
old customs, and they were much pleased to see me get 
over the obstacles which stopped some of the party. So 
they took the whim of solemnly christening a great stone 
at the mouth of the cavern, Clachan-an Bairdh, or the 
Poet's Stone. It was consecrated with a pibroch, which 
the echoes rendered tremendous, and a glass of whisky, not 
poured forth in the ancient mode of libation, but turned 
over the throats of the assistants. The head boatman, 
whose father had been himself a bard, made me a speech on 
the occasion ; but as it was in Gaelic, I could only receive 
it as a silly beauty does a fine-spun compliment — bow, and 
say nothing. 

When this fun was over (in which, strange as it may 
seem, the men were quite serious), we went to Iona, where 
there are some ancient and curious monuments. From this 
remote island the light of Christianity shone forth on 
Scotland and Ireland. The ruins are of a rude architecture, 
but curious to the antiquary. Our return was less comfort- 
able ; we had to row twenty miles against an Atlantic tide 
and some wind, besides the pleasure of seeing occasional 
squalls gathering to windward. The ladies were sick, 
especially poor Hannah Mackenzie, and none of the gentle- 
men escaped except StafFa and myself. The men, however, 



64 FINGAL'S CAVE 

cheered by the pipes, and by their own interesting boat- 
songs, which were uncommonly wild and beautiful, one 
man leading and the others answering in chorus, kept pull- 
ing away without apparently the least sense of fatigue, and 
we reached Ulva at ten at night, tolerably wet, and well 
disposed for bed. 

The haze and dullness of the atmosphere seem to render 
it dubious if we can proceed, as we intended, to Staffa to- 
day — for mist among these islands is rather unpleasant. 
Erskine reads prayers on deck to all hands, and introduces a 
very apt allusion to our being now in sight of the first 
Christian Church from which Revelation was diffused over 
Scotland and all its islands. There is a very good form of 
prayer for the Lighthouse Service composed by the Rev. 
Mr. Brunton. A pleasure vessel lies under our lee from 
Belfast, with an Irish party related to Macneil of Colonsay. 
The haze is fast degenerating into downright rain, and that 
right heavy — verifying the words of Collins — 

" And thither where beneath the showery west 
The mighty Kings of three fair realms are laid." ' 

After dinner, the weather being somewhat cleared, sailed 
for Staffa, and took boat. The surf running heavy up be- 
tween the island and the adjacent rock, called Booshala, we 
landed at a creek near the Cormorant's cave. The mist 
now returned so thick as to hide all view of Iona, which 
was our landmark ; and although Duff, Stevenson, and I, 
had been formerly on the isle, we could not agree upon the 

1 Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands. 



FINGAL'S CAVE 65 

proper road to the cave. I engaged myself, with Duff and 
Erskine, in a clamber of great toil and danger, and which 
at length brought me to the Cannon-ball, as they call a round 
granite stone moved by the sea up and down in a groove of 
rock, which it has worn for itself, with a noise resembling 
thunder. Here I gave up my research, and returned to my 
companions, who had not been more fortunate. As night 
was now falling, we resolved to go aboard and postpone the 
adventure of the enchanted cavern until next day. The 
yacht came to an anchor with the purpose of remaining off 
the island all night, but the hardness of the ground, and the 
weather becoming squally, obliged us to return to our safer 
mooring at Y-Columb-Kill. 

29th August, 1 8 14. 
Night squally and rainy — morning ditto — we weigh, 
however, and return towards Staffa, and, very happily, the 
day clears as we approach the isle. As we ascertained the 
situation of the cave, I shall only make this memorandum, 
that when the weather will serve, the best landing is to the 
lee of Booshala, a little conical islet or rock, composed of 
basaltic columns placed in an oblique or sloping position. 
In this way, you land at once on the flat causeway, formed 
by the heads of truncated pillars, which leads to the cave. 
But if the state of tide renders it impossible to land under 
Booshala, then take one of the adjacent creeks ; in which 
case, keeping to the left hand along the top of the ledge of 
rocks which girdles in the isle, you find a dangerous and 
precipitous descent to the causeway aforesaid, from the 



00 FINGAL'S CAVE 

table. Here we were under the necessity of towing our 
Commodore, Hamilton, whose gallant heart never fails 
him, whatever the tenderness of his toes may do. He was 
successfully lowered by a rope down the precipice, and pro- 
ceeding along the flat terrace or causeway already men- 
tioned, we reached the celebrated cave. I am not sure 
whether I was not more affected by this second, than by 
the first view of it. The stupendous columnar side walls — 
the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern 
is filled — the variety of tints formed by stalactites dropping 
and petrifying between the pillars, and resembling a sort of 
chasing of yellow or cream-coloured marble filling the 
interstices of the roof — the corresponding variety below, 
where the ocean rolls over a red 5 and in some places a 
violet-coloured rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars — the 
dreadful noise of those august billows so well corresponding 
with the grandeur of the scene — are all circumstances else- 
where unparalleled. We have now seen in our voyage the 
three grandest caverns in Scotland, — Smowe, Macallister's 
Cave, and StafFa ; so that, like the Troglodytes of yore, 
we may be supposed to know something of the matter. It 
is, however, impossible to compare scenes of natures so 
different, nor, were I compelled to assign a preference to 
any of the three, could I do it but with reference to their 
distinct characters, which might affect different individuals 
in different degrees. The characteristic of the Smowe cave 
may in this case be called the terrific, for the difficulties 
which oppose the stranger are of a nature so uncommonly 
wild, as, for the first time at leastj to convey an, impression of 



FIN GAL'S CAVE 67 

terror — with which the scenes to which he is introduced 
fully correspond. On the other hand the dazzling white- 
ness of the incrustations in Macallister's Cave, the elegance 
of the entablature, the beauty of its limpid pool, and the 
graceful dignity of its arch, render its leading features those 
of severe and chastened beauty. Staffa, the third of these 
subterranean wonders, may challenge sublimity as its prin- 
cipal characteristic. Without the savage gloom of the 
Smowe cave, and investigated with more apparent ease, 
though, perhaps, with equal real danger, the stately regu- 
larity of its columns forms a contrast to the grotesque im- 
agery of Macallister's Cave, combining at once the senti- 
ments of grandeur and beauty. The former is, however, 
predominant, as it must necessarily be in any scene of the 
kind. 

We had scarce left Staffa when the wind and rain re- 
turned. 

Lockbarty Life of Sir Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1878). 



FINGAL'S CAVE 

JOHN KEATS 

I AM puzzled how to give you an Idea of Staffa. It 
can only be represented by a first-rate drawing. One 
may compare the surface of the Island to a roof — this roof 
is supported by grand pillars of basalt standing together as 
thick as honeycombs. The finest thing is Fingal's Cave — 
it is entirely a hollowing out of Basalt Pillars. Suppose 
now the Giants who rebelled against Jove had taken a 
whole Mass of black Columns and bound them together 
like bunches of matches — and then with immense axes had 

made a cavern in the body of these columns Of course 

the roof and floor must be composed of broken ends of the 
Columns — such is Fingal's Cave, except that the Sea has 
done the work of excavations, and is continually dashing 
there — so that we walk along the sides of the cave on the 
pillars which are left as if for convenient stairs. The roof 
is arched somewhat gothic-wise, and the length of some of 
the entire side-pillars is fifty feet. About the island you 
might seat an army of Men each on a pillar. The length 
of the cave is 120 feet, and from its extremity the view 
into the sea, through the large Arch at the entrance — the 
colour of the columns is a sort of black with a lurking 
gloom of purple therein. For solemnity and grandeur it 



FINGAL'S CAVE 69 

far surpasses the finest Cathedral. At the extremity of the 
Cave there is a small perforation into another cave, at which 
the waters meeting and buffeting each other there is some- 
times produced a report as of a cannon heard as far as Iona, 
which must be twelve Miles. As we approached in the 
boat, there was such a fine swell of the sea that the pillars 
appeared rising immediately out of the crystal. But it is 
impossible to describe it — 



Not Aladdin magian 
Ever such a work began. 
Not the Wizard of the Dee 
Ever such a dream could see, 
Not St. John in Patmos Isle 
In the passion of his toil 
When he saw the churches seven 
Golden-aisled built up in heaven 
Gaz'd at such a rugged wonder. 
As I stood its roofing under 
Lo! I saw one sleeping there 
On the marble cold and bare. 
While the surges wash'd his feet 
And his garments white did beat 
Drench'd about the sombre rocks, 
On his neck his well-grown locks 
Lifted dry above the Main 
Were upon the curl again — 

" What is this ? and what art thou ? " 
Whisper'd I, and touch'd his brow ; 

" What art thou ? and what is this ? " 
Whisper'd I, and strove to kiss 
The, Spirit's hand, to wake his eyes ; 
Up he started in a trice : 

" I am Lycidas," said he 

" Fam'd in funeral Minstrelsy — 
This was architected thus 
By the great Oceanus. 



7° FINGAL'S CAVE 

Here his mighty waters play 

Hollow Organs all the day, 

Here, by turns, his dolphins all, 

Finny palmers great and small, 

Come to pay devotion due — 

Each a mouth of pearls must strew ! 

Many a mortal of these days 

Dares to pass our sacred ways, 

Dares to touch, audaciously 

This Cathedral of the sea — 

I have been the Pontiff-priest, 

Where the Waters never rest, 

Where a fledgy sea-bird choir 

Soars for ever — holy fire 

I have hid from Mortal Man. 

Proteus is my Sacristan 

But the stupid eye of Mortal 

Hath pass'd beyond the Rocky portal, 

So for ever will I leave 

Such a taint and soon unweave 

All the magic of the place — 

'Tis now free to stupid face — 

To cutters and to fashion boats, 

To cravats and Petticoats. 

The great Sea shall war it down, 

For its fame shall not be blown 

At every farthing quadrille dance." 

So saying with a Spirit's glance 

He dived — 



I am sorry I am so indolent as to write such stuff as this. 
It can't be helped. The western coast of Scotland is a 
most strange place — it is composed of rocks, mountains, 
mountainous and rocky islands intersected by lochs — you 
can go but a short distance anywhere from salt water in the 
highlands. 

Letters of John Keats (London and New York, 1 891). 



IN THE HIMALAYAS 



G. W. STEEVENS 



IN Calcutta they grumbled that the hot weather was be- 
ginning already. Mornings were steamy, days sticky, 
and the municipal impurities rose rankly. The carter 
squatted over his bullocks with his shining body stark naked 
but for a loin-cloth. 

At Siliguri, the bottom of the ascent to Darjiling, the 
rough grass and the tea-gardens were sheeted at sunrise in a 
silver frost. What few natives appeared happed their 
heads in shawls as if they had toothache. 

It takes you an afternoon and a night to get as far as 
Siliguri. What you principally notice on the way is the 
dullness of the flat, moist richness of Bengal, and the extra- 
ordinary fullness of the first-class carriages. Even at this 
winter season the residents of Calcutta snatch at the chance 
of being cold for twenty-four hours. When you get out of 
your carriage at the junction station, you see on the other 
side of the platform a dumpy little toy train — a train at the 
wrong end of a telescope with its wheels cut from beneath 
it. Engines and trucks and carriages seem to be crawling 
like snakes on their bellies. Six miniature easy-chairs, 
three facing three, on an open truck with an awning, make 
a first-class carriage. 



72 IN THE HIMALAYAS 

This is the Darjiling-Himalaya Railway — two-foot 
gauge, climbing four feet to the hundred for fifty miles up 
the foothills of the greatest mountains in the world. It is 
extraordinary as the only line in India that has been built 
with Indian capital. But you will find that the least of its 
wonders. A flat-faced hillman bangs with a hammer twice 
three times on a spare bit of railway metal hung up by way 
of a gong, the whistle screams, and you pant away on 
surely the most entrancing railway journey in the world. 
Nothing very much to make your heart jump in the first 
seven miles. You bowl along the surface of a slightly as- 
cending cart-load, and your view is mostly bamboo and tea. 
Graceful enough, and cool to the eye — the bamboos, hedges 
or clumps of slender stem with plumes of pale leaf swing- 
ing and nodding above them ; the tea, trim ranks and files 
of short, well-furnished bushes with lustrous, dark-green 
leaves, not unlike evergreens or myrtle in a nursery at 
home, — but you soon feel that you have known bamboo 
and tea all your life. Then suddenly you begin to climb, 
and all at once you are in a new world — a world of plants. 

A new world is easy to say, but this is new indeed and a 
very world — such a primeval vegetable world as you have 
read of in books and eked out with dreams. It has every- 
thing you know in your world, only everything expressed 
in vegetation. It is a world in its variety alone. Trees of 
every kind rise up round you at every angle — unfamiliar, 
most of them, and exaggerations of forms you know, as if 
they were seen through a microscope. You might come 
on such broad fleshy leaves by way of Jack's giant bean- 



IN THE HIMALAYAS 73 

stalk. Other growths take the form of bushes as high as 
our trees ; but beside them are skinny, stunted starvelings, 
such as the most niggardly country might show. Then 
there are grasses — tufted, ruddy bamboo grass, and huge 
yellow straws with giant bents leaning insolently over to 
flick your face as you go by. Smaller still grow the ferns, 
lurking shyly in the crevices of the banks. And over 
everything, most luxuriant of everything, crawl hundred- 
armed creepers, knitting and knotting the whole jungle into 
one mellay of struggling life. 

The varieties — the trees and shrubs and grasses and 
ferns and creepers — you would see in any tropical garden ; 
but you could not see them at home. You could not see 
them in their unpruned native intercourse one with the 
other. The rise and fall of the ground, the whims of light 
and air, coax them into shapes that answer to the most fan- 
tastic imagination. Now you are going through the solemn 
aisles of a great cathedral — grey trunks for columns, with 
arches and vaulted roofs of green, with dark, retreating 
chapels and altar-trappings of mingled flowers. Now it is 
a king's banqueting-hall, tapestried with white-flowering 
creeper and crimson and purple bougainvillea ; overhead 
the scarlet-mahogany blossoms of a sparse-leaved tulip-tree 
might be butterflies frescoed on a ceiling. 

Fancy can compel the wilderness into moments of order, 
but wild it remains. The growths are not generally build- 
ings, but animate beings in a real world. You see no per- 
fectly shaped tree, as in a park or garden ; one is warped, 
another stunted, another bare below — each formed, like 



74 IN THE HIMALAYAS 

men, by the pressure of a thousand fellows. Here is a 
corpse spreading white, stark arms abroad. Here are half- 
a-dozen young creatures rolling over each other like puppies 
at play. And there is a creeper flinging tumultuous, en- 
raptured arms round a stately tree ; presently it is gripping 
it in thick bands like Laocoon's serpent, then choking it 
mercilessly to death, then dead itself, its bleached, bare 
streamers dangling limply in the wind. It is life, indeed, 
this forest — plants fighting, victorious and vanquished ; loving 
and getting children ; springing and waxing and decaying 
and dying — our own world of men translated into plants. 

While I am spinning similitudes, the Darjiling-Himalaya 
Railway is panting always upwards, boring through the 
thick world of trees like a mole. Now it sways round a 
curve so short that you can almost look back into the next 
carriage, and you understand why the wheels are so low. 
Now it stops dead, and almost before it stops starts back- 
wards up a zigzag, then forwards up another, and on again. 
In a moment it is skating on the brink of a slide of shale 
that trembles to come down and overwhelm it ; next it is 
rumbling across a bridge above the point it passed ten 
minutes ago, and also that which it will reach ten minutes 
hence. Twisting, backing, circling, dodging, but always 
rising, it untreads the skein whose end is in the clouds and 
the snows. 

Presently the little engine draws quite clear of the jungle. 
You skirt opener slopes, and the blue plain below is no 
longer a fleeting vista, but a broad prospect. You see how 
the forest spills itself on to the fields and spreads into a dark 



IN THE HIMALAYAS 75 

puddle over their lightness. You see a great river overlay- 
ing the dimness with a ribbon of steel. The ferns grow 
thicker about you ; gigantic fronds bow at you from gullies 
overhead, and you see the tree-fern — a great crown of 
drooping green on a trunk of a man's height — standing 
superbly alone, knowing its supreme gracefulness. Next, 
as you rise and rise, the air gets sharp ; through a gauzy 
veil of mist appear again huge forests, but dark and gloomy 
with brown moss dripping dankly from every branch. Ris- 
ing, rising, and you have now come to Ghoom, the highest 
point. Amid the cold fog appears the witch of Ghoom — 
a hundred years old, with a pointed chin and mop of griz- 
zled hair all witch-fashion, but beaming genially and re- 
questing backsheesh. 

Then round a corner — and here is Darjiling. A scat- 
tered settlement on a lofty ridge, facing a great cup en- 
closed by other ridges — mountains elsewhere, here hills. 
Long spurs run down into the hollow, half black with for- 
est, half pale and veined with many paths. At the bottom 
is a little chequer of fresh green millet ; the rim at the top 
seems to line the sky. 

And the Himalayas and the eternal snows ? The devil 
a Himalaya in sight. Thick vapours dip down and over 
the very rim of the cup ; beyond Darjiling is a tumult of 
peaked creamy cloud. You need not be told it, — clouds 
that hide mountains always ape their shapes, — the majestic 
Himalayas are behind that screen, and you will not see 
them to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow, nor yet for a fortnight 
of to-morrows. 



76 IN THE HIMALAYAS 

You must console yourself with Darjiling and the hill- 
men. And Darjiling is pleasant to the eye as you look 
down on it, a huddle of grey corrugated-iron roofs, one 
stepping over the other, hugging the hillside with one or 
two red ones to break the monotone. There is no contin- 
uous line of them : each stands by itself in a ring of deep 
green first. The place is cool and grateful after an Indian 
town — clean and roomy, a place of homes and not of pens. 

In the middle of it is the bazaar, and my day, by luck, 
was market-day. Here, again, you could never fancy your- 
self in India. A few Hindus there are, but beside the 
dumpy hillmen their thin limbs, tiny features, and melting 
eyes seem hardly human. More like the men you know is 
the Tibetan, with a long profile and long, sharp nose, 
though his hat has the turned-up brim of the Chinese, 
though he wears a long bottle-green dressing-gown open to 
the girdle, and his pigtail knocks at the back of his knees. 
But the prevailing type, though as Mongolian, is far more 
genial than the Tibetan. Squat little men, for the most 
part, fill the bazaar, with broad faces that give room for the 
features, with button noses, and slits for eyes. They wear 
boots and putties, or gaiters made of many-coloured carpet- 
bagging •, and their women are like them — with shawls over 
their heads, and broad sashes swathing them from bosom to 
below the waist, with babies slung behind their backs, not 
astride on the hip as are the spawn of India. Their eyes 
are black as sloes — puckered, too, but seeming puckered 
with laughter ; and their clear yellow skins are actually 
rosy on the cheeks, like a ripe apricot. Square-faced, long- 



IN THE HIMALAYAS 77 

pigtailed, plump, cheery, open of gaze, and easy of carriage, 
rolling cigarettes, and offering them to soothe babies — they 
might not be beautiful in Europe ; here they are ravishing. 

But you come to Darjiling to see the snows. So on a 
night of agonizing cold — feet and hands a block of ice the 
moment you cease to move them — must follow a rise be- 
fore it is light. Maybe the clouds will be kinder this 
morning. No; the same stingy, clammy mist, — only there, 
breaking through it, high up in the sky — yes, there are a 
few faint streaks of white. Just a few marks of snow 
scored on the softer white of the cloud, chill with the ut- 
terly disconsolate cold of ice through a window of fog. 
Still, there are certainly Himalayas there. 

Up and up ' I toiled ; the sun was plainly rising behind 
the ridge of Darjiling. In the cup below the sunlight was 
drawing down the hillsides and peeling off the twilight. 
Then, at a sudden turn of the winding ascent, I saw the sum- 
mit of Kinchinjunga. Just the summit, poised in the blue, 
shining and rejoicing in the sunrise. And as I climbed and 
climbed, other peaks rose into sight below and beside him, 
all dazzling white, mounting and mounting the higher I 
mounted, every instant more huge and towering and stately, 
boring into the sky. 

Up — till I came to the summit, and the sun appeared — 
a golden ball swimming in a sea of silver. He was sending 
the clouds away curling before him ; they drifted across the 
mountains, but he pursued and smote and dissolved them. 
And ever the mountains rose and rose, huger and 
huger; as they swelled up they heaved the clouds away in 



78 IN THE HIMALAYAS 

rolls off* their shoulders. Now their waists were free, and 
all but their feet. Only a chasm of fog still hid their lower 
slopes. Fifty miles away, they looked as if I could toss a 
stone across to them ; only you could never hope to hit 
their heads, they towered so gigantically. Now the clouds, 
clearing to right and left, laid bare a battlemented range of 
snow-white wall barring the whole horizon. Behind these 
appeared other peaks ; it was not a range, but a country of 
mountains, not now a wall, but a four-square castle carved 
by giants out of eternal ice. It was the end of the world 
— a sheer rampart, which forbade the fancy of anything 
beyond. 

And in the centre, by peak and col and precipice, the 
prodigy reared itself up to Kinchinjunga. Bare rock be- 
low, then blinding snow seamed with ridges of chimneys, 
and then, above, the mighty summit — a tremendous three- 
cornered slab of grey granite between two resplendent 
faces of snow. Other mountains tiptoe at the sky snatch 
at it with a peak like a needle. Kinchinjunga heaves him- 
self up into it, broadly, massively, and makes his summit a 
diadem. He towers without effort, knowing his majesty. 
Sublime and inviolable, he lifts his grey nakedness and his 
mail of burnished snow, and turns his forehead serenely to 
sun and storm. Only their touch, of all things created, 
has perturbed his solitude since the birth of time. 

In India (New York, 1899). 



NIAGARA FALLS 

ANTHONY TROLLOPE 

IT has been said that it matters much from what point 
the Falls are first seen, but to this I demur. It mat- 
ters, I think, very little, or not at all. Let the visitor first 
see it all, and learn the whereabouts of every point, so as 
to understand his own position and that of the waters ; and 
then having done that in the way of business let him pro- 
ceed to enjoyment. I doubt whether it be not the best to 
do this with all sight-seeing. I am quite sure that it is the 
way in which acquaintance may be best and most pleas- 
antly made with a new picture. The Falls are, as I have 
said, made by a sudden breach in the level of the river. 
All cataracts are, I presume, made by such breaches; but 
generally the waters do not fall precipitously as they do at 
Niagara, and never elsewhere, as far as the world yet 
knows, has a breach so sudden been made in such a body 
of water. Up above the Falls, for more than a mile, the 
waters leap and burst over rapids, as though conscious of 
the destiny that awaits them. Here the river is very 
broad, and comparatively shallow, but from shore to shore 
it frets itself into little torrents, and begins to assume the 
majesty of its power. Looking at it even here, one feels 
sure that no strongest swimmer could have a chance of 
saving himself, if fate had cast him in even among those 



So NIAGARA FALLS 

petty whirlpools. The waters, though so broken in their 
descent, are deliciously green. This colour as seen early in 
the morning, or just as the sun has set, is so bright as to 
give to the place of its chiefest charms. 

This will be best seen from the further end of the island 
— Goat Island, as it is called, which, as the reader will un- 
derstand, divides the river immediately above the Falls. 
Indeed the island is a part of that precipitously broken 
ledge over which the river tumbles ; and no doubt in proc- 
ess of time will be worn away and covered with water. 
The time, however, will be very long. In the meanwhile 
it is perhaps a mile round, and is covered thickly with tim- 
ber. At the upper end of the island the waters are di- 
vided, and coming down in two courses, each over its own 
rapids, form two separate falls. The bridge by which the 
island is entered is a hundred yards or more above the 
smaller fall. The waters here have been turned by the is- 
land, and make their leap into the body of the river below 
at a right angle with it, — about two hundred yards below 
the greater fall. Taken alone this smaller cataract would, 
I imagine, be the heaviest fall of water known, but taken 
in conjunction with the other it is terribly shorn of its 
majesty. The waters here are not green as they are at the 
larger cataract, and though the ledge has been hollowed 
and bowed by them so as to form a curve, that curve does 
not deepen itself into a vast abyss as it does at the horseshoe 
up above. This smaller fall is again divided, and the visitor 
passing down a flight of steps and over a frail wooden 
bridge finds himself on a smaller island in the midst of it. 




NIAGARA FALLS. 



NIAGARA FALLS 8 I 

But we will go at once on to the glory, and the thunder, 
and the majesty, and the wrath of that upper hell of wa- 
ters. We are still, let the reader remember, on Goat Is- 
land, still in the States, and on what is called the American 
side of the main body of the river. Advancing beyond 
the path leading down to the lesser fall, we come to that 
point of the island at which the waters of the main river 
begin to descend. From hence across to the Canadian 
side the cataract continues itself in one unabated line. 
But the line is very far from being direct or straight. 
After stretching for some little way from the shore, to a 
point in the river which is reached by a wooden bridge at 
the end of which stands a tower upon the rock, — after 
stretching to this, the line of the ledge bends inwards 
against the flood, — in, and in, and in, till one is led to think 
that the depth of that horseshoe is immeasurable. It has 
been cut with no stinting hand. A monstrous cantle has 
been worn back out of the centre of the rock, so that the 
fury of the waters converges, and the spectator as he gazes 
into the hollow with wishful eyes fancies that he can hardly 
trace out the centre of the abyss. 

Go down to the end of that wooden bridge, seat your- 
self on the rail, and there sit till all the outer world is lost 
to you. There is no grander spot about Niagara than this. 
The waters are absolutely around you. If you have that 
power of eye-control, which is so necessary to the full en- 
joyment of scenery, you will certainly see nothing but the 
water. You will certainly hear nothing else; and the 
sound, I beg you to remember, is not an ear-cracking, 



82 NIAGARA FALLS 

agonizing crash and clang of noises ; but is melodious and 
soft withal, though loud as thunder. It fills your ears, and 
as it were envelops them, but at the same time you can 
speak to your neighbour without an effort. But at this 
place, and in these moments, the less of speaking I should 
say the better. There is no grander spot than this. Here, 
seated on the rail of the bridge, you will not see the 
whole depth of the fall. In looking at the grandest works 
of nature, and of art too, I fancy, it is never well to see 
all. There should be something left to the imagination, 
and much should be half-concealed in mystery. The 
greatest charm of a mountain range is the wild feeling that 
there must be strange desolate worlds in those far-off val- 
leys beyond. And so here, at Niagara, that converging 
rush of waters may fall down, down at once into a hell of 
rivers for what the eye can see. It is glorious to watch 
them in their first curve over the rocks. They come 
green as a bank of emeralds ; but with a fitful flying col- 
our, as though conscious that in one moment more they 
would be dashed into spray and rise into air, pale as driven 
snow. The vapour rises high into the air, and is gathered 
there, visible always as a permanent white cloud over the 
cataract; but the bulk of the spray which fills the lower 
hollow of that horseshoe is like a tumult of snow. This 
you will not fully see from your seat on the rail. The 
head of it rises ever and anon out of the caldron below, 
but the caldron itself will be invisible. It is ever so far 
down, — far as your own imagination can sink it. But 
your eyes will rest full upon the curve of the waters. 



NIAGARA FALLS 83 

The shape you will be looking at is that of a horseshoe, 
but of a horseshoe miraculously deep from toe to heel ; — 
and this depth becomes greater as you sit there. That 
which at first was only great and beautiful, becomes gigan- 
tic and sublime till the mind is at loss to find an epithet for 
its own use. To realize Niagara you must sit there till 
you see nothing else than that which you have come to see. 
You will hear nothing else, and think of nothing else. At 
length you will be at one with the tumbling river before you. 
You will find yourself among the waters as though you be- 
longed to them. The cool liquid green will run through your 
veins, and the voice of the cataract will be the expression 
of your own heart. You will fall as the bright waters fall, 
rushing down into your new world with no hesitation and 
with no dismay; and you will rise again as the spray rises, 
bright, beautiful, and pure. Then you will flow away in 
your course to the uncompassed, distant, and eternal ocean. 
And now we will cross the water, and with this object 
will return by the bridge out of Goat Island on the main- 
land of the American side. But as we do so let me say 
that one of the great charms of Niagara consists in this, — 
that over and above that one great object of wonder and 
beauty, there is so much little loveliness ; — loveliness es- 
pecially of water, I mean. There are little rivulets running 
here and there over little falls, with pendent boughs above 
them, and stones shining under their shallow depths. As 
the visitor stands and looks through the trees the rapids 
glitter before him, and then hide themselves behind islands. 
They glitter and sparkle in far distances under the bright 



84 NIAGARA FALLS 

foliage till the remembrance is lost, and one knows not 
which way they run. 

Close to the cataract, exactly at the spot from whence in 
former days the Table Rock used to project from the land 
over the boiling caldron below, there is now a shaft down 
which you will descend to the level of the river, and pass 
between the rock and the torrent. This Table Rock broke 
away from the cliff and fell, as up the whole course of the 
river the seceding rocks have split and fallen from time to 
time through countless years, and will continue to do till 
the bed of the upper lake is reached. You will descend 
this shaft, taking to yourself or not taking to yourself a suit 
of oil-clothes as you may think best. 

In the spot to which I allude the visitor stands on a 
broad safe path, made of shingles, between the rock over 
which the water rushes. He will go in so far that the 
spray rising back from the bed of the torrent does not in- 
commode him. With this exception, the further he can go 
in the better; but circumstances will clearly show him the 
spot to which he should advance. Unless the water be 
driven in by a strong wind, five yards make the difference 
between a comparatively dry coat and an absolutely wet one. 
And then let him stand with his back to the entrance, thus 
hiding the last glimmer of the expiring day. So standing 
he will look up among the falling waters, or down into the 
deep misty pit, from which they reascend in almost as 
palpable a bulk. The rock will be at his right hand, high 
and hard, and dark and straight, like the wall of some huge 
cavern, such as children enter in their dreams. For the 



NIAGARA FALLS 85 

first five minutes he will be looking but at the waters of a 
cataract, — at the waters, indeed, of such a cataract as we 
know no other, and at their interior curves which elsewhere 
we cannot see. But by and by all this will change. He 
will no longer be on a shingly path beneath a waterfall ; 
but that feeling of a cavern wall will grow upon him, of a 
cavern deep, below roaring seas, in which the waves are 
there, though they do not enter in upon him ; or rather not 
the waves, but the very bowels of the ocean. He will feel 
as though the floods surrounded him, coming and going 
with their wild sounds, and he will hardly recognize that 
though among them he is not in them. And they, as they 
fall with a continual roar, not hurting the ear, but musical 
withal, will seem to move as the vast ocean waters may 
perhaps move in their internal currents. He will lose the 
sense of one continued descent, and think that they are 
passing round him in their appointed courses. The broken 
spray that rises from the depth below, rises so strongly, so 
palpably, so rapidly, that the motion in every direction will 
seem equal. And, as he looks on, strange colours will 
show themselves through the mist ; the shades of grey will 
become green or blue, with ever and anon a flash of white ; 
and then, when some gust of wind blows in with greater 
violence, the sea-girt cavern will become all dark and 
black. Oh, my friend, let there be no one there to speak 
to thee then ; no, not even a brother. As you stand there 
speak only to the waters. 

North America (London, 1862). 



NIAGARA FALLS 

CHARLES DICKENS 

WE called at the town of Erie, at eight o'clock that 
night, and lay there an hour. Between five and 
six next morning, we arrived at Buffalo, where we break- 
fasted ; and being too near the Great Falls to wait patiently 
anywhere else, we set off by the train, the same morning at 
nine o'clock, to Niagara. 

It was a miserable day ; chilly and raw ; a damp mist 
falling ; and the trees in that northern region quite bare and 
wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for the roar ; 
and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where 
I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on 
towards them ; every moment expecting to behold the 
spray. Within a few moments of our stopping, not before, 
I saw two great white clouds rising up slowly and majestic- 
ally from the depths of the earth. That was all. At 
length we alighted ; and then for the first time, I heard the 
mighty rush of water, and felt the ground tremble under- 
neath my feet. 

The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and 
half-melted ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was 
soon at the bottom, and climbing, with two English officers 
who were crossing and had joined me, over some broken 



NIAGARA FALLS 87 

rocks, deafened by the noise, half-blinded by the spray, and 
wet to the skin. We were at the foot of the American 
Fall. I could see an immense torrent of water tearing 
headlong down from some great height, but had no idea of 
shape, or situation, or anything but vague immensity. 

When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were 
crossing the swollen river immediately before both cataracts, 
I began to feel what it was — but I was in a manner 
stunned, and unable to comprehend the vastness of the 
scene. It was not until I came on Table Rock, and looked 
— Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright green water ! — 
that it came upon me in its full might and majesty. 

Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was stand- 
ing, the first effect, and the enduring one — instant and last- 
ing — of the tremendous spectacle, was Peace. Peace of 
Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections of the Dead, great 
thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness : nothing of gloom 
or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, 
an Image of Beauty ; to remain there, changeless and in- 
delible, until its pulses cease to beat, for ever. 

Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from 
my view, and lessened in the distance, during the ten 
memorable days we passed on that Enchanted Ground ! 
What voices spoke from out the thundering water; what 
faces, faded from the earth, looked out upon me from its 
gleaming depths ; what Heavenly promise glistened in those 
angels' tears, the drops of many hues, that showered 
around, and twined themselves about the gorgeous arches 
which the changing rainbows made ! 



88 NIAGARA FALLS 

I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side, 
whither I had gone at first. I never crossed the river 
again ; for I knew there were people on the other shore, 
and in such a place it is natural to shun strange company. 
To wander to and fro all day, and see the cataracts from 
all points of view ; to stand upon the edge of the great 
Horse-Shoe Fall, marking the hurried water gathering 
strength as it approached the verge, yet seeming too, to 
pause before it shot into the gulf below ; to gaze from the 
river's level up at the torrent as it came streaming down ; 
to climb the neighbouring heights and watch it through the 
trees, and see the wreathing water in the rapids hurrying on 
to take its fearful plunge ; to linger in the shadow of the 
solemn rocks three miles below; watching the river as, 
stirred by no visible cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke 
the echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneath its surface, 
by its giant leap ; to have Niagara before me, lighted by the 
sun and by the moon, red in the day's decline, and grey as 
evening slowly fell upon it ; to look upon it every day, and 
wake up in the night and hear its ceaseless voice : this was 
enough. 

I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters 
roll and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long ; still are 
the rainbows spanning them, a hundred feet below. Still, 
when the sun is on them, do they shine and glow like 
molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they fall 
like snow, or seem to crumble away like the front of a 
great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense white 
smoke. But always does the mighty stream appear to die 



NIAGARA FALLS 89 

as it comes down, and always from its unfathomable grave 
arises that tremendous ghost of spray and mist which is 
never laid : which has haunted this place with the same 
dread solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep, and 
that first flood before the Deluge — Light — came rushing on 
Creation at the word of God. 

American Notes for General Circulation (London, 1842). 



FUJI-SAN 

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD 

I HAVE just made in the company of Captain John 
Ingles, R. N., Naval Adviser to the Imperial Govern- 
ment of this country, and a young Japanese gentleman — 
Mr. Asso — a very fortunate and delightful ascent of Fuji- 
San, the famous mountain — you would not wonder, residing 
here, that everybody in Japan talks about Fuji, and thinks 
about her ; paints her on fans, and limns her with gold on 
lacquer ; carves her on temple-gates and house-fronts, and 
draws her for curtains of shops and signboards of inns, rest- 
houses and public institutions. Living in Tokio or Yoko- 
hama, or anywhere along this Tokaido — the Southern road 
of Japan — you would soon perceive how the great volcano 
dominates every landscape, asserts perpetually her sover- 
eignty over all other hills and mountains, and becomes in 
reality as well as imagination, an indispensable element in 
the national scenery. Far away at sea, when approaching 
Japan, if the weather be clear, long before the faintest blue 
line of coast is discernible from the deck, there is seen 
hanging in the air a dim white symmetrical cone, too con- 
stant for a cloud, which is Fuji-San. After you have 
landed and taken up your residence in Yokohama, Tokio, 
or any point of the southeastern littoral, you will be always 



FUJI-SAN 9 1 

seeing Fuji-Yama from some garden-nook, some tea-house 
gallery, some grove of cryptomerias, or thicket of bamboo, 
or even from the railway-carriage window. In the spring 
and autumn, as frequently as not, she will, indeed, be 
shrouded in the dense masses of white or grey cumulus 
which her crest collects, and seems to create in the mists 
of the Pacific. But during summer, when the snows are 
all melted from the vast cone, and again in winter, when 
she is covered with snow half-way down her colossal sides, 
but the air is clear, the superb mountain stands forth, dawn 
after dawn, and evening after evening — like no other em- 
inence in the world for beauty, majesty, and perfectness of 
outline. There are loftier peaks, of course, for Fuji-San is 
not much higher than Mont Blanc, but there is none — not 
even Etna — which rises so proudly alone, isolated, distinct, 
from the very brink of the sea — with nothing to hide or 
diminish the dignity of the splendid and immense curves 
sweeping up from where the broad foot rests, planted on 
the Suruga Gulf, to where the imperial head soars, lifted 
high above the clouds into the blue of the firmament. By 
many and many a picture or photograph you must know 
well those almost perfectly matched flanks, that massive 
base, the towering lines of that mighty cone, slightly 
truncated and dentated at the summit. But no picture 
gives, and no artist could ever reproduce, the variety and 
charm of the aspect which Fuji-San puts on from day to 
day and hour to hour under the differing influences of air 
and weather. Sometimes it is as a white cloud that you 
see her, among the white clouds, changeless among the 



92 FUJI-SAN 

changeful shapes from which she emerges. Sometimes 
there will break forth, high above all clouds, a patch of 
deep grey against the blue, the broad head of Fuji. Some- 
times you will only know where she sits by the immense 
collection of cirrus and cirro-cumulus there alone gathered 
in the sky ; and sometimes — principally at dawn and night- 
fall — she will suddenly manifest herself, from her foot, 
jewelled with rich harvests, to her brow, bare and lonely as 
a desert — all violet against the gold of the setting sun, or 
else all gold and green against the rose and silver of the 
daybreak. 

As late as the Fourteenth Century Fuji was constantly 
smoking, and fire is spoken of with the eruptions, the last 
of which took place in December, 1707, and continued for 
nearly forty days. The Ho-Yei-san, or hump in the south 
face, was probably then formed. In this, her final out- 
break, Fuji covered Tokio itself, sixty miles away, with six 
inches of ash, and sent rivers of lava far and wide. Since 
then she has slept, and only one little spot underneath 
the Kwan-nom-Gatake, on the lip of the crater, where 
steam exhales, and the red pumice-cracks are hot, shows 
that the heart of this huge volcano yet glows, and that she 
is capable of destroying again her own beauty and the 
forests and rich regions of fertility which clothe her knees 
and feet. 

It is a circuit of 120 miles to go all round the base of 
Fuji-San. If you could cut a tunnel through her from 
Yoshiwara to Kawaguchi, it would be forty miles long. 
Generally speaking, the lower portion of the mountain is 



FUJI-SAN 93 

cultivated to a height of 1,500 feet, and it is a whole prov- 
ince which thus climbs round her. From the border of 
the farms there begins a rough and wild, but flowery moor- 
land, which stretches round the hill to an elevation of 4,000 
feet, where there the thick forest-belt commences. This 
girdles the volcano up to 7,000 feet on the Subashiri side 
and 8,000 on the Murayama fall, but is lower to the east- 
ward. Above the forest extends a narrow zone of thicket 
and bush, chiefly dwarfed larch, juniper and a vaccinium ; 
after which comes the bare, burnt, and terribly majestic peak 
itself, where the only living thing is a little yellow lichen 
which grows in the fissures of the lava blocks, for no eagle 
or hawk ventures so high, and the boldest or most bewil- 
dered butterfly will not be seen above the bushes half-way 
down. 

The best — indeed, the only — time for the ascent of the 
mountain is between July 15th and September 5th. Dur- 
ing this brief season the snow will be melted from the cone, 
the huts upon the path will be opened for pilgrims, and 
there will be only the danger of getting caught by a typhoon, 
or reaching the summit to find it swathed day after day in 
clouds, and no view obtainable. Our party of three started 
for the ascent on August 25th, taking that one of the many 
roads by which Fuji is approached that goes by Subashiri. 
Such an expedition may be divided into a series of stages. 
You have first to approach the foot of the mountain by 
train or otherwise, then to ride through the long slope of 
cultivated region. Then, abandoning horses or vehicles, to 
traverse on foot the sharper slopes of the forest belt. At 



94 FUJI-SAN 

the confines of this you will reach the first station, called 
Sho or Go ; for Japanese fancy has likened the mountain to 
a heap of dry rice and the stations are named by rice-meas- 
ure. From the first station to the ninth, whatever road 
you take, all will be hard, hot, continuous climbing. You 
must go by narrow, bad paths, such as a goat might make, 
in loose volcanic dust, gritty pumice, or over the sharp 
edges of lava dykes, which cut boots and sandals to 
shreds. 

At daybreak the horses are brought, and the six coolies, 
two by two, bind upon their backs the futons and the food. 
We start, a long procession, through a broad avenue in the 
forest, riding for five miles, under a lovely dawn, the sun 
shining gloriously on the forehead of Fuji, who seems 
further off and more immensely lofty the nearer we approach. 
The woodland is full of wild strawberries and flowers ; in- 
cluding tiger-lilies, clematis, Canterbury bells, and the blue 
hotari-no bana, or fire-fly blossom. At 6:30 A. M., we 
reach Uma-Gayeshi, or " turn-the-horses-back" ; and hence 
to the mountain top there is nothing for it but to walk 
every step of the long, steep, and difficult path. Two of 
the men with the lightest loads led the way along the nar- 
row path, in a wood so thick that we shall not see Fuji 
again till we have passed through it. It takes us every 
now and then through the gates and precincts of little Shinto 
temples, where the priests offer us tea or mountain water. 
In one of them, at Ko-mitake, we are invited to ring the 
brass gong in order that the Deity may make our limbs 
strong for the task before us. And this is solemnly done 



FUJI-SAN 95 

by all hands, the ninsoku slapping their brown thighs piously 
after sounding the bell. 

The shortest time in which the ascent has been made is 
six hours and a half. We, taking it more easily, made no 
attempt to beat the record, and stopped frequently to botan- 
ize, geologize, etc. The rarefaction of the air gave our 
Japanese companion, Takaji San, a slight headache, which 
soon passed as the circulation became accustomed to the at- 
mosphere ; but Captain Ingles and I, being I suppose, both in 
excellent health and strength, experienced no inconvenience 
worth mentioning. 

At half-past four next morning, while I was dreaming 
under my thick coverings, a hand touched me and a voice 
said softly, " Danna Sama, hi no de ! " " Master, here is 
the sun!" The shoji at my feet were thrown open. I 
looked out, almost as you might from the moon, over a 
prodigious abyss of space, beyond which the eastern rim of 
all the world seemed to be on fire with flaming light. A 
belt of splendid rose and gold illumined all the horizon, 
darting long spears of glory into the dark sky overhead, 
gilding the tops of a thousand hills, scattered over the purple 
plains below, and casting on the unbroken background of 
clouds beyond an enormous shadow of Fuji. The spectacle 
was of unparalleled splendour, recalling Lord Tennyson's 
line — 

" And, in the East, 
God made himself an awful Rose of Dawn." 

Moment by moment it grew more wonderful in loveliness of 
colour and brilliant birth of day ; and then, suddenly, just 



96 FUJI-SAN 

when the sun rolled into sight — an orb of gleaming gold, 
flooding the world beneath with almost insufferable radiance 
— a vast mass of dense white clouds swept before the north 
wind over the view, completely blotting out the sun, the 
belt of rose and gold, the lighted mountains and plains, and 
the lower regions of Fuji-San. It was day again, but misty, 
white, and doubtful ; and when we started to climb the last 
two stages of the cone the flags of the stations were invis- 
ible, and we could not know whether we should find the 
summit clear, or wrapped in enveloping clouds. 

All was to be fortunate, however, on this happy day ; 
and after a hard clambering of the remaining 2,000 feet we 
planted our staffs victoriously on the level ground of the 
crater's lip and gazed north, south, east, and west through 
clear and cloudless atmosphere over a prodigious prospect, 
whose diameter could not be less than 300 miles. It was 
one of the few days when O-ana-mochi, the Lord of the 
Great Hole, was wholly propitious ! Behind the long row 
of little black huts standing on the edge of the mountain, 
gaped that awful, deadly Cup of the Volcano — an immense 
pit half a mile wide and six or seven hundred feet deep, its 
sides black, yellow, red, white, and grey, with the varying 
hues of the lava and scoriae. In one spot where a perpet- 
ual shadow lay, from the ridge-peaks of Ken-ga-mine and 
the Shaka-no-wari-ishi, or " Cleft Rock of Buddha," 
gleamed a large patch of unmelted snow, and there was 
dust-covered snow at the bottom of the crater. We skirted 
part of the crater, passed by the dangerous path which is 
styled " Oya-shirazu, Ko-shirazu," " The place where you 



FUJI-SAN 97 

must forget parents and children, to take care of yourself; " 
saw the issue of the Kim-mei-sai or " Golden famous 
water," and of the Gim-mei-sai, or " Silver famous water" ; 
and came back to breakfast at our hut silent with the de- 
light and glory, the beauty and terror of the scene. Enor- 
mous flocks of fleecy clouds and cloudlets wandered in the 
lower air, many thousand feet beneath, but nowhere con- 
cealed the lakes, peaks, rivers, towns, villages, valleys, sea- 
coasts, islands, and distant provinces spreading out all 
round. Imagine the prospect obtainable at 13,000 feet of 
elevation through the silvery air of Japan on a summer's 
morning with not a cloud, except shifting, thin, and transi- 
tory ones, to veil the view ! 

At the temple with the bell we were duly stamped — 
shirts, sticks, and clothing — with the sacred mark of the 
mountain, and having made the hearts of our faithful and 
patient ninsoku glad with extra pay, turned our backs on the 
great extinct volcano, whose crest, glowing again in the 
morning sunlight, had no longer any secrets for Captain 
Ingles, or Takaji San, or myself. 

Seas and Lands (New York, 1891). 



THE CEDARS OF LEBANON 

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE 

THE Sheik of Eden, the last inhabited village towards 
the summit of Lebanon, was the maternal uncle 
of M. Mazoyer, my interpreter. Informed by his nephew 
of our arrival in Tripoli, the venerable sheik descended the 
mountain with his eldest son and a portion of his retinue ; 
he came to visit me at the convent of the Franciscans, and 
offered me hospitality at his home in Eden. From Eden 
to the Cedars of Solomon it is only a three hours' march ; 
and if the snows that cover the mountains will permit us, 
we can visit these ancient trees that have spread their glory 
over all Lebanon and that are contemporaries of the great 
king ; we accepted, and the start was arranged for the 
following day. 

At five o'clock in the morning we were on horseback. 
The caravan, more numerous than usual, was preceded 
by the Sheik of Eden, an admirable old man whose elegance 
of manner, noble and easy politeness, and magnificent cos- 
tume were far from suggesting an Arab chieftain ; one 
would have called him a patriarch marching at the head of 
his tribe ; he rode upon a mare of the desert whose golden- 
bay skin and floating mane would have made a worthy 
mount for a hero of Jerusalem ; his son and his principal 



THE CEDARS OF LEBANON 99 

attendants caracoled upon magnificent stallions, a few paces 
before him ; we came next, and then the long file of our 
moukres and our Sais. ... 

The sheik has sent three Arabs over the route to the 
Cedars to learn if the snow will permit us to approach 
those trees ; the Arabs returning say that access is imprac- 
ticable ; there are fourteen feet of snow in a narrow valley 
which must be crossed before reaching the trees ; — wishing 
to get as near as possible, I entreat the sheik to give me 
his son and several horsemen; I leave my wife and my 
caravan at Eden j I mount the strongest of my horses, 
Scham, and we are en route at break of day ; — a march of 
three hours over the crests of the mountains, or in the fields 
softened with melting snow. I arrive at the edge of the 
valley of the Saints, a deep gorge where the glance sweeps 
from the rocky height to a valley more confined, more 
sombre and more solemn even than that of Hamana ; at 
the top of this valley, at the place where, after continually 
rising, it reaches the snows, a superb sheet of water falls, a 
hundred feet high and two or three tones wide ; the entire 
valley resounds with this waterfall and the leaping torrents 
that it feeds ; on every side the rocky flanks of the moun- 
tain stream with foam ; we see almost beyond our vision, 
in the depths of the valley, two large villages the houses of 
which can scarcely be distinguished from the rocks rolled 
down by the torrent ; the tops of the poplars and the mul- 
berries from here look like tufts of reed or grass ; we de- 
scend to the village of Beschierai by paths cut in the rock, 
and so abrupt that one can hardly imagine that men will 

LofC. 



100 THE CEDARS OF LEBANON 

risk themselves upon them ; people do perish sometimes ; a 
stone thrown from the crest where we stand would fall 
upon the roofs of these villages where we shall arrive after 
an hour's descent ; above the cascade and the snows, enor- 
mous fields of ice extend, undulating like vapours in tints- 
greenish and blue by turns ; in about a quarter of an hour 
towards the left in a half circular valley formed by the last 
mounts of Lebanon, we see a large, black blot upon the 
snow, — the famous group of cedars ; they crown the brow 
of the mountain like a diadem; they mark the branching 
off of numerous and large valleys that descend from there ; 
the sea and the sky are their horizon. 

We put our horses to a gallop over the snow to get as 
near as possible to the forest ; but on arriving five or six 
hundred steps from the trees, we plunge our horses up to 
their shoulders ; we realize that the report of the Arabs is 
correct, and we must renounce the hope of touching these 
relics of the centuries and of nature; we alight and sit 
upon a rock to contemplate them. 

These trees are the most celebrated natural monuments 
in the whole universe. Religion, poetry, and history have 
equally consecrated them. Holy Writ celebrates them in 
several places. They are one of the favourite images which 
the prophets employ. Solomon wished to consecrate them 
— doubtless on account of the renown of magnificence and 
sanctity that these prodigies of vegetation enjoyed at this 
epoch — to the ornamentation of the temple that he was the 
first to elevate to the one God. These were certainly the 
trees ; for Ezekiel speaks of the cedars of Eden as the most 



THE CEDARS OF LEBANON 10 1 

beautiful of Lebanon. The Arabs of all sects have a tra- 
ditional veneration for them. They attribute to these trees, 
not only a vegetative force that gives them eternal life, but 
even a soul that makes them give signs of wisdom, of fore- 
sight, similar to those of instinct in animals and intelligence 
in men. They know the seasons in advance ; they move 
their enormous branches like human limbs, they spread or 
contract their boughs, they raise their branches towards the 
sky or incline them to the earth, according as the snow is 
preparing to fall or to melt. They are divine beings under 
the form of trees. They grow on this single spot of the 
mounts of Lebanon ; they take root far beyond the region 
where all prolific vegetation dies. All this strikes the 
imagination of the Oriental people with astonishment, and 
I do not know that science is not even more astonished. 
Alas ! however, Basan languishes and Carmel and the 
flower of Lebanon fade. — These trees diminish every cen- 
tury. Travellers formerly counted thirty or forty, later 
seventeen, and still later, about a dozen. — There are now 
only seven of those whose massive forms can presume to 
be contemporaneous with Biblical times. Around these 
old memorials of past ages, which know the history of the 
ground better than history herself, and which could tell us, 
if they could speak, of many empires, religions, and vanished 
human races, there remains still a little forest of cedars 
more yellow it appears to me than a group of four or five 
hundred trees or shrubs. Each year in the month of June 
the population of Beschierai', Eden, and Kanobin, and all 
the villages of the neighbouring valleys, ascend to the cedars 



102 THE CEDARS OF LEBANON 

and celebrate mass at their feet. How many prayers have 
resounded beneath their branches ! And what more beau- 
tiful temple, what nearer altar than the sky ! What more 
majestic and holier dais than the highest plateau of Lebanon, 
the trunks of the cedars and the sacred boughs that have 
shaded and that will still shade so many human generations 
pronouncing differently the name of God, but who recog- 
nize him everywhere in his works and adore him in his 
manifestations of nature ! And I, I also prayed in the 
presence of those trees. The harmonious wind that re- 
sounded through their sonorous branches played in my hair 
and froze upon my eyelids those tears of sorrow and adora- 
tion. 

Voyage en Orient (Paris, 1843). 



THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

THE road to the Causeway is bleak, wild, and hilly. 
The cabins along the road are scarcely better than 
those of Kerry, the inmates as ragged, and more fierce and 
dark-looking. I never was so pestered by juvenile beggars 
as in the dismal village of Ballintoy. A crowd of them 
rushed after the car, calling for money in a fierce manner, 
as if it was their right ; dogs as fierce as the children came 
yelling after the vehicle ; and the faces which scowled out 
of the black cabins were not a whit more good-humoured. 
We passed by one or two more clumps of cabins, with their 
turf and corn-stacks lying together at the foot of the hills ; 
placed there for the convenience of the children, doubtless, 
who can thus accompany the car either way, and shriek out 
their " Bonny gantleman, gi'e us a ha'p'ny." A couple of 
churches, one with a pair of its pinnacles blown off, stood 
in the dismal open country, and a gentleman's house here 
and there : there were no trees about them, but a brown 
graso round about — hills rising and falling in front, and the 
sea beyond. The occasional view of the coast was noble; 
wild Bengore towering eastwards as we went along; Ra- 
ghery Island before us, in the steep rocks and caves of which 
Bruce took shelter when driven from yonder Scottish coast, 
that one sees stretching blue in the northeast. 



104 THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 

I think this wild gloomy tract through which one passes 
is a good prelude for what is to be the great sight of the 
day, and got my mind to a proper state of awe by the time 
we were near the journey's end. Turning away shore- 
wards by the fine house of Sir Francis Macnaghten, I went 
towards a lone handsome inn, that stands close to the 
Causeway. The landlord at Ballycastle had lent me Ham- 
ilton's book to read on the road; but I had not time then 
to read more than half-a-dozen pages of it. They de- 
scribed how the author, a clergyman distinguished as a man 
of science, had been thrust out of a friend's house by the 
frightened servants one wild night, and butchered by some 
Whiteboys who were waiting outside and called for his 
blood. I had been told at Belfast that there was a corpse 
in the inn : was it there now ? It had driven off, the car- 
boy said, " in a handsome hearse and four to Dublin the 
whole way." It was gone, but I thought the house looked 
as if the ghost was there. See, yonder are the black rocks 
stretching to Portrush : how leaden and grey the sea looks ! 
how grey and leaden the sky ! You hear the waters rush- 
ing evermore, as they have done since the beginning of the 
world. The car drives us with a dismal grinding noise of 
the wheels to the big lone house : there's no smoke in the 
chimneys ; the doors are locked. Three savage-looking 
men rush after the car : are they the men who took out Mr. 
Hamilton — took him out and butchered him in the moon- 
light ? Is everybody, I wonder, dead in that big house ? 
Will they let us in before those men are up ? Out comes 
a pretty smiling girl, with a curtsey, just as the savages are 



THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY I05 

at the car, and you are ushered into a very comfortable 
room ; and the men turn out to be guides. Well, thank 
Heaven it's no worse ! I had fifteen pounds still left ; and, 
when desperate, have no doubt should fight like a lion. 

The traveller no sooner issues from the inn by a back 
door, which he is informed will lead him straight to the 
Causeway, than the guides pounce upon him, with a dozen 
rough boatmen who are likewise lying in wait ; and a crew 
of shrill beggar-boys, with boxes of spars, ready to tear him 
and each other to pieces seemingly, yell and bawl inces- 
santly round him. "I'm the guide Miss Henry recom- 
mends," shouts one. " I'm Mr. Macdonald's guide," 
pushes in another. " This way," roars a third, and drags 
his prey down a precipice ; the rest of them clambering 
and quarrelling after. I had no friends ; I was perfectly 
helpless. I wanted to walk down to the shore by myself, 
but they would not let me, and I had nothing for it but to 
yield myself into the hands of the guide who had seized 
me, who hurried me down the steep to a little wild bay, 
flanked on each side by rugged cliffs and rocks,' against 
which the waters came tumbling, frothing, and roaring 
furiously. Upon some of these black rocks two or three 
boats were lying : four men seized a boat, pushed it shout- 
ing into the water, and ravished me into it. We had slid 
between two rocks, where the channel came gurgling in : 
we were up one swelling wave that came in a huge ad- 
vancing body ten feet above us, and were plunging madly 
down another (the descent causes a sensation in the lower 
regions of the stomach which it is not at all necessary here 



106 THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 

to describe), before I had leisure to ask myself why the 
deuce I was in that boat, with four rowers hurrooing and 
bounding madly from one liquid mountain to another — four 
rowers whom I was bound to pay. I say, the query came 
qualmishly across me why the devil I was there, and why 
not walking calmly on the shore. 

The guide began pouring his professional jargon into my 
ears. " Every one of them bays," says he, " has a name 
(take my place, and the spray won't come over you) : that 
is Port Noffer, and the next, Port na Gange; them rocks 
is the Stookawns (for every rock has its name as well as 
every bay); and yonder — give way, my boys, — hurray, 
we're over it now : has it wet you much, sir ? — that's a 
little cave : it goes five hundred feet under ground, and the 
boats goes into it easy of a calm day." 

" Is it a fine day or a rough one now ? " said I ; the in- 
ternal disturbance going on with more severity than ever. 

" It's betwixt and between ; or, I may say, neither one 
nor the other. Sit up, sir. Look at the entrance of the 
cave. Don't be afraid, sir ; never has an accident happened 
in any one of these boats, and the most delicate ladies has 
rode in them on rougher days than this. Now, boys, pull 
to the big cave. That, sir, is six hundred and sixty yards 
in length, though some say it goes for miles inland, where 
the people sleeping in their houses hear the waters roaring 
under them." 

The water was tossing and tumbling into the mouth of 
the little cave. I looked, — for the guide would not let me 
alone till I did,— and saw what might be expected : a black 



THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 107 

hole of some forty feet high, into which it was no more 
possible to see than into a millstone. " For Heaven's sake, 
sir," says I, " if you've no particular wish to see the mouth 
of the big cave, put about and let us see the Causeway and 
get ashore." This was done, the guide meanwhile telling 
some story of a ship of the Spanish Armada having fired 
her guns at two peaks of rock, then visible, which the crew 
mistook for chimney-pots — what benighted fools these 
Spanish Armadilloes must have been ; it is easier to see a 
rock than a chimney-pot ; it is easy to know that chimney- 
pots do not grow on rocks. — " But where, if you please, is 
the Causeway ? " 

" That's the Causeway before you," says the guide. 

« Which ? " 

" That pier which you see jutting out into the bay right 
ahead." 

" Mon dieu ! and have I travelled a hundred and fifty 
miles to see that ? " 

I declare, upon my conscience, the barge moored at 
Hungerford Market is a more majestic object, and seems 
to occupy as much space. As for telling a man that the 
Causeway is merely a part of the sight ; that he is there for 
the purpose of examining the surrounding scenery ; that if 
he looks to the westward he will see Portrush and Donegal 
Head before him; that the cliffs immediately in his front 
are green in some places, black in others, interspersed with 
blotches of brown and streaks of vendure ; — what is all this 
to a lonely individual lying sick in a boat, between two im- 
mense waves that only give him momentary glimpses of the 



108 THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 

land in question, to show that it is frightfully near, and yet 
you are an hour from it ? They won't let you go away— 
that cursed guide will tell out his stock of legends and 
stories. The boatmen insist upon your looking at boxes 
of " specimens," which you must buy of them ; they laugh 
as you grow paler and paler ; they offer you more and more 
" specimens " ; even the dirty lad who pulls number three, 
and is not allowed by his comrades to speak, puts in his 
oar, and hands you over a piece of Irish diamond (it looks 
like half-sucked alicompayne), and scorns you, " Hurry, 
lads, now for it, give way ! " how the oars do hurtle in the 
rowlocks, as the boat goes up an aqueous mountain, and 
then down into one of those cursed maritime valleys where 
there is no rest as on shore ! 

At last, after they had pulled me enough about, and sold 
me all the boxes of specimens, I was permitted to land at 
the spot whence we set out, and whence, though we had 
been rowing for an hour, we had never been above five 
hundred yards distant. Let all cockneys take warning from 
this ; let the solitary one caught issuing from the back door 
of the hotel, shout at once to the boatmen to be gone — 
that he will have none of them. Let him, at any rate, go 
first down to the water to determine whether it be smooth 
enough to allow him to take any decent pleasure by riding 
on its surface. For after all, it must be remembered that 
it is pleasure we come for — that we are not obliged to take 
those boats. — Well, well ! I paid ten shillings for mine, and 
ten minutes after would cheerfully have paid five pounds 
to be allowed to quit it; it was no hard bargain after all. 



THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 10$ 

As for the boxes of spar and specimens, I at once, being on 
terra firma, broke my promise, and said I would see them 
all — first. It is wrong to swear, I know ; but sometimes 
it relieves one so much ! 

The first act on shore was to make a sacrifice to Sanctis- 
sima Tellus ; offering up to her a neat and becoming Tag- 
lioni coat, bought for a guinea in Covent Garden only three 
months back. I sprawled on my back on the smoothest of 
rocks that is, and tore the elbows to pieces : the guide 
picked me up ; the boatman did not stir, for they had their 
will of me; the guide alone picked me up, I say, and bade 
me follow him. We went across a boggy ground in one 
of the little bays, round which rise the green walls of the 
cliff", terminated on either side by a black crag, and the line 
of the shore washed by the poluphloisboiotic, nay the pol- 
uphloisboiotatotic sea. Two beggars stepped over the bog 
after us howling for money, and each holding up a cursed 
box of specimens. No oaths, threats, entreaties, would 
drive these vermin away ; for some time the whole scene 
had been spoiled by the incessant and abominable jargon of 
them, the boatmen, and the guides. I was obliged to give 
them money to be left in quiet, and if, as no doubt will be 
the case, the Giant's Causeway shall be a still greater re- 
sort of travellers than ever, the county must put police- 
men on the rocks to keep the beggars away, or fling them 
in the water when they appear. 

And now, by force of money, having got rid of the sea 
and land beggars, you are at liberty to examine at your 
leisure the wonders of the place. There is not the least 



110 THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 

need for a guide to attend the stranger, unless the latter 
have a mind to listen to a parcel of legends, which may be 
well from the mouth of a wild simple peasant who believes 
in his tales, but are odious from a dullard who narrates 
them at the rate of sixpence a lie. Fee him and the other 
beggars, and at last you are left tranquil to look at the 
strange scene with your own eyes, and enjoy your own 
thoughts at leisure. 

That is, if the thoughts awakened by such a scene may 
be called enjoyment ; but for me, I confess, they are too 
near akin to fear to be pleasant ; and I don't know that I 
would desire to change that sensation of awe and terror 
which the hour's walk occasioned, for a greater familiarity 
with this wild, sad, lonely place. The solitude is awful. I 
can't understand how those chattering guides dare to lift 
up their voices here, and cry for money. 

It looks like the beginning of the world, somehow : the 
sea looks older than in other places, the hills and rocks 
strange, and formed differently from other rocks and hills — 
as those vast dubious monsters were formed who possessed 
the earth before man. The hilltops are shattered into a 
thousand cragged fantastical shapes ; the water comes 
swelling into scores of little strange creeks, or goes off 
with a leap, roaring into those mysterious caves yonder, 
which penetrate who knows how far into our common 
world. The savage rock-sides are painted of a hundred 
colours. Does the sun ever shine here ? When the world 
was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this 
must have been the bit over — a remnant of chaos ! Think 



THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY III 

of that ! — it is a tailor's simile. Well, I am a cockney : I 
wish I were in Pall Mall ! Yonder is a kelp-burner : a 
lurid smoke from his burning kelp rises up to the leaden 
sky, and he looks as naked and fierce as Cain. Bubbling 
up out of the rocks at the very brim of the sea rises a little 
crystal spring : how comes it there ? and there is an old 
grey hag beside, who has been there for hundreds and hun- 
dreds of years, and there sits and sells whisky at the ex- 
tremity of creation ! How do you dare to sell whisky 
there, old woman ? Did you serve old Saturn with a glass 
when he lay along the Causeway here ? In reply, she 
says, she has no change for a shilling : she never has ; but 
her whisky is good. 

This is not a description of the Giant's Causeway (as 
some clever critic will remark), but of a Londoner there, 
who is by no means so interesting an object as the natural 
curiosity in question. That single hint is sufficient ; I 
have not a word more to say. " If," says he, " you cannot 
describe the scene lying before us — if you cannot state 
from your personal observation that the number of basaltic 
pillars composing the Causeway has been computed at 
about forty thousand, which vary in diameter, their surface 
presenting the appearance of a tesselated pavement of 
polygonal stones — that each pillar is formed of several dis- 
tinct joints, the convex end of the one being accurately 
fitted in the concave of the next, and the length of the 
joints varying from five feet to four inches — that although 
the pillars are polygonal, there is but one of three sides in 
the whole forty thousand (think of that !), but three of nine 



112 THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY 

sides, and that it may be safely computed that ninety-nine 
out of one hundred pillars have either five, six, or seven 
sides ; if you cannot state something useful, you had much 
better, sir, retire and get your dinner." 

Never was summons more gladly obeyed. The dinner 
must be ready by this time ; so, remain you, and look on 
at the awful scene, and copy it down in words if you can. 
If at the end of the trial you are dissatisfied with your 
skill as a painter, and find that the biggest of your words 
cannot render the hues and vastness of that tremendous 
swelling sea — of those lean solitary crags standing rigid along 
the shore, where they have been watching the ocean ever 
since it was made — of those grey towers of Dunluce 
standing upon a leaden rock, and looking as if some old 
old princess, of old old fairy times, were dragon-guarded 
within — of yon flat stretches of sand where the Scotch and 
Irish mermaids hold conference — come away, too, and 
prate no more about the scene ! There is that in nature, 
dear Jenkins, which passes even our powers. We can feel 
the beauty of a magnificent landscape, perhaps : but we 
can describe a leg of mutton and turnips better. Come, 
then, this scene is for our betters to depict. If Mr. Tenn- 
yson were to come hither for a month, and brood over the 
place, he might, in some of those lofty heroic lines which 
the author of the Morte d' Arthur knows how to pile up, 
convey to the reader a sense of this gigantic desolate scene. 
What ! you, too, are a poet ? Well, then Jenkins, stay ! 
but believe me, you had best take my advice, and come off. 

The Irish Sketch-Book (London, 1843). 



THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS 

DOUGLAS SLADEN 

IF Banff represents the Rocky Mountains made easy, the 
Glacier House represents the Selkirks made easy — a 
much more notable performance, for these mountains had 
long been regarded as impassable by engineering. The 
Glacier House is a few miles beyond Rogers' Pass, in the 
midst of the line's greatest marvels of nature and engineer- 
ing. Just before comes the monarch of snow sheds ; just 
above the monarch of glaciers ; just below the monarch of 
viaducts. The Great Glacier of the Selkirks comes to a 
conclusion within a couple of miles above it. The moraines 
and splintered forests at its foot tell a frightful tale of de- 
struction, and the glacier advances every year ; but only a 
few inches, so the hotel is safe for the present. 

The hotel is a pretty little chalet, mostly dining-room, 
with a trim, level lawn in front containing a fine fountain. 
Eighteen miles broad is the great Glacier of the Sel- 
kirks, one foot of which is planted so threateningly above 
the hotel and the railway station, that it looks as if it meant 
to stamp them out of existence with the stealth of a thief 
in the night. 

A marvellous and delightful walk it is from the hotel to 
the Glacier — at first through dry woods of fir and spruce, 



114 THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS 

and balsam and tamarack, carpeted, wherever the sun 
breaks through, with purple blueberries, wild raspberries, 
pigeon and salmon berries. Here you might meet a grizzly 
bear any minute. You pause, if you are only a man and a 
woman, on the lovers' seat under the thousand-ton boulder 
hurled down by the Glacier in the childhood of the earth. 
Then you pass the fierce glacial torrent of grey-green 
water, so cold or charged with impurities that fish refuse to 
live in it, swelling, as all snow-fed rivers do, as the heat of 
a summer's day waxes. Some of its pools are huge and 
deep ; some of its falls and rapids as fierce as the cataract at 
Lorette, rounded boulders and splintered trunks every- 
where attesting its fury. The path crosses and recrosses 
the river over bridges of tree-trunks, with smaller trunks 
loosely pinned across them, like the little straw mats in 
which cream cheeses are wrapped. As the path mounts, 
the scenery becomes more open, and you are greeted, ac- 
cording to the season, with Canada's gorgeous lily or 
Canada's prodigality of wild fruits ; for you are in the track 
of the glacier and the avalanche, and in the death of the 
forest is the birth of blossoms and berries. All around you 
now is a scene of awful grandeur — boulders as big as 
settlers' huts, and giant tree trunks, many of them blackened 
with fire, tossed together like the rubbish on a dust-heap, 
and, brooding over all, the great Glacier like a dragon 
crouching for the spring. One can hardly believe it is the 
Glacier ; the transitions are so abrupt. A turn of a path 
brings you almost in contact with a piece of ice larger than 
any lake in the British Islands. From under its skirts 



THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS 115 

trickle tiny rills ; a few feet below, the rills league them- 
selves into a river. Even a first-class glacier is a disap- 
pointing affair if you go too close. Its blueness disappears, 
also its luminosity, except in crevasses deep enough to 
show you the pure heart of the ice. The surface is a dirty- 
looking mixture of ice and snow. There were two lovely 
horizontal crevasses, one so spacious and shining that it is 
called the Fairy Cavern. The pleasure of standing in them 
is spoilt, because they look all the time as if they were 
going to close on you. At another foot of the Glacier there 
are immense moraines, looking like the earthworks of 
Dover Castle. I examined them one October day when I 
went with a guide to the top of the Glacier, eight thousand 
feet above sea-level, to see the splendid Glacier-girdled 
head of Mount Fox on the other side of the abyss. 

I never intend to do any more mountain climbing 
through deep, fresh snow. For the last hour or two of the 
ascent the snow was as deep as one's thighs at every step, 
and though the guide was towing me by a rope tied round 
my waist, it was intolerably wearisome. To begin with, he 
had to sound with his staff at every step and see that we 
were on terra Jirma y and not on the soufflet of a crevasse; 
and though there had been such a snowfall the night be- 
fore, the sun was as hot as summer overhead. The sight 
was worth doing once, with the miles and miles of the sea 
of ice all round one, and the long white slopes of virgin 
snow. 

If it had not been for the aggressive visage of Mount 
Fox, it would have answered to the description of the in- 



Il6 THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS 

terior of Greenland given me by Dr. Nansen, where the 
world consists of yourselves, the sun, and the snow. We 
started at eight o'clock in the morning, but in some way or 
other I was not quite as rapid as the guide had calculated, 
for a couple of hours before nightfall he began to get ex- 
cited, if not alarmed. We were at the time clear of the 
deep snow, and muddling about in a mixture of drifts and 
moraines; but after dark he was not sure of his way until 
we struck the path at the foot of the Glacier. 

The Glacier House has not only its noble and easily ac- 
cessible glacier; it is in the very heart of the finest 
mountain scenery in the Selkirks, which is so different to 
the scenery of the Rockies. The Canadian Rockies are 
blunt-topped fisty mountains, with knuckles of bare rock 
sticking out everywhere. The Selkirks are graceful pyra- 
mids and sharp sierras, up to their shoulders in magnificent 
forests of lofty pines. The trees on the Rockies are much 
smaller and poorer. Right above the hotel, to the left of 
the overhanging Glacier, is the bare steeple of Sir Donald, 
one of the monarchs of the range ; Ross Peak and Cheops 
frown on the descent of the line to the Pacific ; and the 
line of the Atlantic is guarded by the hundred pinnacles of 
the rifted mountain, formerly known as the Hermit, and 
now, with singular infelicity, re-christened, in an eponymous 
fit, Mount Tupper. 

Sir Charles Tupper is one of Canada's greatest men, but 
his name is more suitable for a great man than a great 
mountain, especially since there is a very perfect effect of 
a hermit and his dog formed by boulders near the top of 



THE GREAT GLACIER OF THE SELKIRKS 117 

the mountain. The men in the railway camp have got 
over this difficulty with the doggerel : 

" That's Sir Charles Tupper 
Going home to his supper." 

We made two long stays at the Glacier House, and I 
never enjoyed anything more in my life than the effect of 
the snug little chalet, with its velvety lawn, in the strong- 
hold of the giant mountains, brought into touch with the 
great world twice a day by the trains east and west, which 
echoed their approach and departure miles on miles through 
the ranges. 

On the Cars and Off (London, 1 89 5). 



MAUNA LOA 

LADY BRASSEY 

AT 6:30 a. m., we made the island of Hawaii, 
rather too much to leeward, as we had been carried 
by the strong current at least eighteen miles out of our course. 
We were therefore obliged to beat up to windward, in the 
course of which operation we passed a large bark running be- 
fore the wind — the first ship we had seen since leaving Tahiti 
— and also a fine whale, blowing close to us. We could not 
see the high land in the centre of the island, owing to the 
mist in which it was enveloped, and there was great excite- 
ment and much speculation on board as to the principal 
points which were visible. At noon the observations taken 
proved that Tom was right in his opinion as to our exact 
position. The wind dropped as we. approached the coast, 
where we could see the heavy surf dashing against the black 
lava cliffs, rushing up the little creeks, and throwing its 
spray in huge fountain-like jets high above the tall cocoanut- 
trees far inland. 

We sailed along close to the shore, and by two o'clock 
were near the entrance to the Bay of Hilo. In answer to 
our signal for a pilot, a boat came off with a man who said 
he knew the entrance to the harbour, but informed us that 
the proper pilot had gone to Honolulu on a pleasure trip. 



MAUN A LOA 119 

It was a clear afternoon. The mountains, Mauna Kea 
and Mauna Loa, could be plainly seen from top to bottom, 
their giant crests rising nearly 14,000 feet above our heads, 
their tree and fern clad slopes seamed with deep gulches 
or ravines, down each of which a fertilizing river ran into 
the sea. Inside the reef, the white coral shore, on which 
the waves seemed too lazy to break, is fringed with a belt 
of cocoanut palms, amongst which, as well as on the hill- 
sides, the little white houses are prettily dotted. All are 
surrounded by gardens, so full of flowers that the bright 
patches of colour were plainly visible even from the deck of 
the yacht. The harbour is large, and is exposed only to 
one bad wind, which is most prevalent during the winter 
months. 

It was half-past nine before we were all mounted and 
fairly off. The first part of our way lay along the flat 
ground, gay with bright scarlet Guernsey lilies, and shaded 
by cocoanut-trees, between the town and the sea. Then 
we struck off to the right, and soon left the town behind 
us, emerging into the open country. At a distance from 
the sea, Hilo looks as green as the Emerald Isle itself; but 
on a closer inspection the grass turns out to be coarse and 
dry, and many of the trees look scrubby and half dead. 
Except in the " gulches " and the deep holes, between the 
hills, the island is covered with lava, in many places of so 
recent a deposit that it has not yet had time to decompose, 
and there is consequently only a thin layer of soil on its 
surface. The soil being, however, very rich, vegetation 
flourishes luxuriantly for a time; but as soon as the roots 



120 MAUNA LOA 

have penetrated a certain depth, and have come into con- 
tact with the lava, the trees wither up and perish, like the 
seed that fell on stony ground. 

The ohia trees form a handsome feature in the landscape, 
with their thick stems, glossy foliage, and light crimson 
flowers. The fruit is a small, pink, waxy-looking apple, 
slightly acid, pleasant to the taste when you are thirsty. 
The candle-nut trees attain to a large size, and their light 
green foliage and white flowers have a very graceful ap- 
pearance. Most of the foliage, however, is spoiled by a de- 
posit of a black dust, not unlike what one sees on the 
leaves of a London garden. I do not know whether this is 
caused by the fumes of the not far-distant volcano, or 
whether it is some kind of mold or fungus. 

After riding about ten miles in the blazing sun we 
reached a forest, where the vegetation was quite tropical, 
though not so varied in its beauties as that of Brazil, or of 
the still more lovely South Sea Islands. There were ferns 
of various descriptions in the forest, and many fine trees, 
entwined, supported, or suffocated by numerous climbing 
plants, amongst which were blue and lilac convolvulus, and 
magnificent passion-flowers. The protection from the sun 
afforded by this dense mass of foliage was extremely grate- 
ful ; but the air of the forest was close and stifling, and at 
the end of five miles we were glad to emerge once more 
into the open. The rest of the way lay over the hard lava, 
through a desert of scrubby vegetation, occasionally re- 
lieved by clumps of trees in hollows. More than once we 
had a fine view of the sea, stretching away into the far dis- 



MAUNA LOA 121 

tance, though it was sometimes mistaken for the bright blue 
sky, until the surf could be seen breaking upon the black 
rocks, amid the encircling groves of cocoanut-trees. 

The sun shone fiercely at intervals, and the rain came 
down several times in torrents. The pace was slow, the 
road was dull and dreary, and many were the inquiries 
made for the " Half-way House," long before we reached 
it. 

Directly we had finished our meal — about three o'clock — 
the guide came and tried to persuade us that, as the baggage 
mules had not yet arrived, it would be too late for us to go 
on to-day, and that we had better spend the night where 
we were, and start early in the morning. We did not, how- 
ever, approve of this arrangement, so the horses were sad- 
dled, and leaving word that the baggage-mules were to fol- 
low us on as soon as possible, we mounted, and set off" for 
the " Volcano House." We had not gone far before we 
were again overtaken by a shower, which once more 
drenched us to the skin. 

The scene was certainly one of extreme beauty. The 
moon was hidden by a cloud, and the prospect lighted only 
by the red glare of the volcano, which hovered before and 
above us like the Israelites' pillar of fire, giving us hope of 
a splendid spectacle when we should at last reach the long 
wished-for crater. Presently the moon shone forth again, 
and gleamed and glistened on the raindrops and silver grasses 
till they looked like fireflies and glowworms. When 
we emerged from the wood, we found ourselves at 
the very edge of the old crater, the bed of which, three or 



122 MAUNA LOA 

four hundred feet beneath us, was surrounded by steep and 
in many places overhanging sides. It looked like an enor- 
mous caldron, four or five miles in width, full of a mass of 
coloured pitch. In the centre was the still glowing stream 
of dark red lava, flowing slowly towards us, and in every 
direction were red-hot patches, and flames and smoke issu- 
ing from the ground. A bit of the " black country " at 
night, with all the coal-heaps on fire, would give you some 
idea of the scene. Yet the first sensation is rather one of 
disappointment, as one expects greater activity on the part of 
the volcano ; but the new crater was still to be seen, con- 
taining the lake of fire, with steep walls rising up in the 
midst of the sea of lava. 

The grandeur of the view in the direction of the volcano 
increased as the evening wore on. The fiery cloud above 
the present crater augmented in size and depth of colour ; 
the extinct crater glowed red in thirty or forty different 
places ; and clouds of white vapour issued from every crack 
and crevice in the ground, adding to the sulphurous smell 
with which the atmosphere was laden. Our room faced 
the volcano : there were no blinds, and I drew back the 
curtains and lay watching the splendid scene until I fell 
asleep. 

Sunday, December 24th (Christmas Eve). 
I was up at four o'clock, to gaze once more on the won- 
drous spectacle that lay before me. The molten lava still 
flowed in many places, the red cloud over the fiery lake was 
bright as ever, and the stream was slowly ascending in every 



MAUN A LOA 1 23 

direction, over hill and valley, till, as the sun rose, it became 
difficult to distinguish clearly the sulphurous vapours from 
the morning mists. We walked down to the Sulphur Banks, 
about a quarter of a mile from the " Volcano House," and 
burned our gloves and boots in our endeavours to procure 
crystals, the beauty of which generally disappeared after a 
very short exposure to the air. We succeeded, however, 
in finding a few good specimens, and, by wrapping them at 
once in paper and cotton-wool and putting them into a 
bottle, hope to bring them home uninjured. 

On our return we found a gentleman who had just ar- 
rived from Kan, and who proposed to join us in our expedi- 
tion to the crater, and at three o'clock in the afternoon we 
set out, a party of eight, with two guides, and three porters 
to carry our wraps and provisions, and to bring back 
specimens. Before leaving the inn the landlord came to us 
and begged us in an earnest and confidential manner to be 
very careful to do exactly what our guides told us, and es- 
pecially to follow in their footsteps exactly when returning 
in the dark. He added : " There never has been an acci- 
dent happen to anybody from my house, and I should feel 
real mean if one did : but there have been a power of 
narrow escapes." 

First of all we descended the precipice, 300 feet in 
depth, forming the wall of the old crater, but now thickly 
covered with vegetation. It is so steep in many places that 
flights of zigzag wooden steps have been inserted in the 
face of the cliff in some places, in order to render the 
descent practicable. At the bottom we stepped straight on 



124 MAUNA LOA 

to the surface of cold boiled lava, which we had seen from 
above last night. Even here, in every crevice where a few 
grains of soil had collected, delicate little ferns might be 
seen struggling for life, and thrusting out their green fronds 
towards the light. It was the most extraordinary walk 
imaginable over that vast plain of lava, twisted and distorted 
into every conceivable shape and form, according to the 
temperature it had originally attained, and the rapidity with 
which it had cooled, its surface, like half-molten glass, 
cracking and breaking beneath our feet. Sometimes we 
came to a patch that looked like the contents of a pot, sud- 
denly petrified in the act of boiling ; sometimes the black 
iridescent lava had assumed the form of waves, or more 
frequently of huge masses of rope, twisted and coiled to- 
gether ; sometimes it was piled up like a collection of 
organ-pipes, or had gathered into mounds and cones of 
various dimensions. As we proceeded the lava became 
hotter and hotter, and from every crack arose gaseous 
fumes, affecting our noses and throats in a painful manner; 
till at last, when we had to pass to leeward of the molten 
stream flowing from the lake, the vapours almost choked 
us, and it was with difficulty we continued to advance. 
The lava was more glassy and transparent-looking, as if it 
had been fused at a higher temperature than usual ; and 
the crystals of sulphur, alum, and other minerals, with 
which it abounded, reflected the light in bright prismatic 
colours. In places it was quite transparent, and we could 
see beneath it the long streaks of a stringy kind of lava, like 
brown spun glass, called " Pele's hair." 



MAUNA LOA 1 25 

At last we reached the foot of the present crater, and 
commenced the ascent of the outer wall. Many times the 
thin crust gave way beneath our guide, and he had to retire 
quickly from the hot, blinding, choking fumes that immedi- 
ately burst forth. But we succeeded in reaching the top ; 
and then what a sight presented itself to our astonished 
eyes ! I could neither speak nor move at first, but could 
only stand and gaze at the terrible grandeur of the scene. 

We were standing on the extreme edge of the precipice, 
overhanging a lake of molten fire, a hundred feet below us, 
and nearly a mile across. Dashing against the cliffs on the 
opposite side, with a noise like the roar of a stormy ocean, 
waves of blood-red, fiery, liquid lava hurled their billows 
upon an iron-bound headland, and then rushed up the face 
of the cliffs to toss their gory spray high in the air. The 
restless, heaving lake boiled and bubbled, never remaining 
the same for two minutes together. Its normal colour 
seemed to be a dull, dark red, covered with a thin grey 
scum, which every moment and in every part swelled and 
cracked, and emitted fountains, cascades, and whirlpools of 
yellow and red fire, while sometimes one big golden river, 
sometimes four or five flowed across it. There was an 
island on one side of the lake, which the fiery waves seemed 
to attack unceasingly with relentless fury, as if bent on 
hurling it from its base. On the other side was a large 
cavern, into which the burning mass rushed with a loud 
roar, breaking down in its impetuous headlong career the 
gigantic stalactites that overhung the mouth of the cave, and 
flinging up the liquid material for the formation of fresh ones. 



126 MAUNA LOA 

It was all terribly grand, magnificently sublime ; but no 
words could adequately describe such a scene. The preci- 
pice on which we were standing overhung the crater so 
much that it was impossible to see what was going on im- 
mediately beneath ; but from the columns of smoke and 
vapour that arose, the flames and sparks that constantly 
drove us back from the edge, it was easy to imagine that 
there must have been two or three grand fiery fountains be- 
low. As the sun set, and the darkness enveloped the 
scene, it became more awful than ever. We retired a little 
way from the brink, to breathe some fresh air, and to try 
and eat the food we had brought with us ; but this was an 
impossibility. Every instant a fresh explosion or glare 
made us jump up to survey the stupendous scene. The 
violent struggles of the lava to escape from its fiery bed, 
and the loud and awful noises by which they were at 
times accompanied, suggested the idea that some impris- 
oned monsters were trying to release themselves from their 
bondage with shrieks and groans, and cries of agony and 
despair, at the futility of their efforts. 

Sometimes there were at least seven spots on the borders 
of the lake where the molten lava dashed up furiously 
against the rocks — seven fire-fountains playing simultane- 
ously. With the increasing darkness the colours emitted 
by the glowing mass became more and more wonderful, 
varying from the deepest jet-black to the palest grey, from 
darkest maroon through cherry and scarlet to the most delicate 
pink, violet, and blue ; from the richest brown, through orange 
and yellow, to the lightest straw-colour. And there was yet an- 



MAUNA LOA 1 27 

other shade, only describable by the term " molten-lava col- 
our." Even the smokes and vapours were rendered beautiful 
by their borrowed lights and tints, and the black peaks, pin- 
nacles, and crags, which surrounded the amphitheatre, 
formed a splendid and appropriate background. Sometimes 
great pieces broke off and tumbled with a crash into the 
burning lake, only to be remelted and thrown up anew. I 
had for some time been feeling very hot and uncomfort- 
able, and on looking round the cause was at once appar- 
ent. Not two inches beneath the surface, the grey lava on 
which we were standing and sitting was red-hot. A stick 
thrust through it caught fire, a piece of paper was immedi- 
ately destroyed, and the gentlemen found the heat from the 
crevices so great that they could not approach near enough 
to light their pipes. 

One more last look, and then we turned our faces away 
from the scene that had enthralled us for so many hours. 
The whole of the lava we had crossed, in the extinct 
crater, was now aglow in many patches, and in all direc- 
tions flames were bursting forth, fresh lava was flowing, 
and smoke and steam were issuing from the surface. It 
was a toilsome journey back again, walking as we did in 
single file, and obeying the strict injunctions of our head 
guide to follow him closely, and to tread exactly in his foot- 
steps. On the whole it was easier by night than by day 
to distinguish the route to be taken, as we could now see 
the dangers that before we could only feel ; and many were 
the fiery crevices we stepped over or jumped across. Once 
I slipped, and my foot sank through the thin crust. Sparks 



128 MAUNA LOA 

issued from the ground, and the stick on which I leaned 
caught fire before I could fairly recover myself. 

Monday, December 25th, (Christmas Day). 
Turning in last night was the work of a very few 
minutes, and this morning I awoke perfectly refreshed and 
ready to appreciate anew the wonders of the prospect that 
met my eyes. The pillar of fire was still distinctly visible, 
when I looked out from my window, though it was not so 
bright as when I had last seen it: but even as I looked it 
began to fade, and gradually disappeared. At the same 
moment a river of glowing lava issued from the side of the 
bank which we had climbed with so much difficulty yester- 
day, and slowly but surely overflowed the ground we had 
walked over. I woke Tom, and you may imagine the 
feelings with which we gazed upon this startling phenom- 
enon, which, had it occurred a few hours earlier, might have 
caused the destruction of the whole party. 

A Voyage in the Sunbeam (London, 1878). 



TROLLHATTA 

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 

WHOM did we meet at Trollhatta ? It is a 
strange story. We will relate it. 

We landed at the first sluice and immediately stood in a 
kind of English garden ; the broad pathways are covered 
with gravel and rise in low terraces between the green sun- 
lit greensward. It is charming and delightful here, but by 
no means imposing ; if one desires to be excited in this 
manner, he must go a little higher up to the old sluices, 
that have burst, deep and narrow, through the hard rock. 
Nature is magnificent here, and the water roars and foams in 
its deep bed far below. Up here one looks over valley and 
river ; the bank of the river on the other side rises in green 
undulating hills, with clusters of leafy trees and wooden 
houses painted red ; rocks and pine forests hem in the land- 
scape. Through the sluices steamboats and sailing vessels 
are ascending ; the water itself is the attendant spirit that 
must bear them up above the rock. And from the forest 
it issues, buzzing, roaring, and blustering. The din of the 
Trollhatta Falls mingles with the noise of the sawmills 
and the smithies. 

" In three hours we shall be through the sluices," said 
the Captain, " and then you shall visit the Falls. We shall 
meet again at the inn above." 



130 TROLLHATTA 

We went along the path that led through the forest and 
thickets ; a whole flock of bare-headed boys surrounded us, 
all wishing to be our guides ; each one outscreamed the 
other, and each gave contradictory explanations of how 
high was the water and how high it did not or could rise ; 
and here was also a great difference of opinion among the 
learned. Soon we came to a halt on a large heather- 
covered rock, a dizzying eminence. Before us, but deep 
below, the foaming, roaring water — the Hell Fall, and over 
this, cascade after cascade, the rich, swelling, rushing 
river, the outlet of the largest lake in Sweden. What a 
sight, what a foaming above and below ! It is like the 
waves of the sea, or like effervescing champagne, or like boil- 
ing milk ; the water rushes around two rocky islands above so 
that the spray rises like mist from a meadow, while below, 
it is more compressed, and, hurrying away, returns in 
circles ; then it rolls down in a long wave-like fall, the 
Hell FalL What a roaring storm in the deep — what a 
spectacle I Man is dumb. And so were also the scream- 
ing little guides ; they were silent, and when they renewed 
their explanations and stories, they did not get far before an 
old gentleman, whom none of us had noticed, although he 
was here among us, made himself heard above the noise 
with his peculiarly shrill voice ; he spoke of the place and 
its former days as if they had been of yesterday. 

" Here on the rocky isles," said he, " here in olden 
times the warriors, as they are called, decided their dis- 
putes. The warrior, Starkodder, dwelt in this region, and 
took a fancy to the pretty maid Ogn ; but she fancied 



trollhAtta 131 

Hergrimer the more, and in consequence he was challenged 
by Starkodder to a duel here by the Falls and met his 
death ; but Ogn sprang towards them, and, seizing her 
lover's bloody sword, thrust it into her heart. Starkodder 
did not get her. So a hundred years passed and another 
hundred ; the forest became heavy and thick, wolves and 
bears prowled here summer and winter, and wicked robbers 
hid their booty here and no one could find them ; yonder, by 
the Fall before Top Island, on the Norwegian side, was their 
cave ; now it has fallen in — the cliff there overhangs it ! " 

"Yes, the Tailors' Cliff! " screamed all the boys. "It 
fell in the year 1755 ! " 

" Fell ! " cried the old man as if astonished that any one 
could know of it but himself. " Everything will fall : the 
tailor also fell. The robbers placed him upon the cliff and 
told him that if he would be liberated for his ransom he 
must sew a suit of clothes there ; he tried to do it, but as 
he drew out his thread at the first stitch, he became dizzy 
and fell into the roaring water, and thus the rock got the 
name of The Tailors' Cliff. One day the robbers 
caught a young girl, and she betrayed them ; she kindled a 
fire in the cavern, the smoke was seen, the cavern was dis- 
covered, and the robbers imprisoned and executed ; that 
outside there is called The Thieves' Fall, and below, un- 
der the water, is another cave j the river rushes in there 
and issues out foaming ; you can see it well up here and 
hear it too, but it can be heard better under the stony roof 
of the mountain sprite." 

And we went on and on along the waterfall towards Top 



1 3 2 TROLLHATTA 

Island, always on smooth paths covered with saw-dust 
to Polhelm's-Sluice ; a cleft has been made in the rock for 
the first intended sluice-work, which was not finished, but 
on account of which has been shaped the most imposing of 
all the Trollhatta Falls ; the hurrying water falls perpen- 
dicularly into the dark depth. The side of the rock here is 
connected with Top Island by means of a light iron bridge, 
which seems to be thrown over the abyss ; we venture on 
this swaying bridge above the rushing, whirling water, and 
soon stand on the little rocky island between firs and pines 
that dart out of the crevices ; before us rushes a sea of 
waves, broken as they rebound against the rock on which we- 
stand, spraying us with their fine eternal mist ; on each side 
the torrent flows as if shot from a gigantic cannon, waterfall 
upon waterfall ; we look above them all and are lulled by 
the harmonic tone that has existed for thousands of years. 

"No one can ever get to that island over there," said one of 
our party, pointing to the large island above the highest fall. 

" I know one who got there ! " exclaimed the old man, 
and nodded with a peculiar smile. 

" Yes, my grandfather got there ! " said one of the boys, 
" but for a hundred years scarcely any one else has reached 
it. The cross that stands there was set up by my grand- 
father. It had been a severe winter, the whole of Lake 
Venern was frozen, the ice dammed up the outlet, and for 
many hours the bottom was dry. Grandfather has told us 
about it : he and two others went over, set up the cross, 
and returned. Just then there was a thundering and crack- 
ing noise just like cannon, the ice broke up and the stream 



TROLLHATTA 1 33 

overflowed meadows and forest. It is true, every word 
I say ! " 

One of the travellers cited Tegner : 

" Vildt Gota stortade fran Fjallen, 

Hemsk Trollet fran sat Toppfall rot ! 
Men Snillet kom och sprangt stod Hallen, 
Med Skeppen i sitt skot ! " 

" Poor mountain sprite," he added, " thy power and 
glory are failing ! Man flies beyond thee — Thou must 
learn of him ! " 

The garrulous old man made a grimace, and muttered 
something to himself — but we were now by the bridge be- 
fore the inn, the steamboat glided through the open way, 
every one hurried on board and immediately it shot above 
the Fall just as if no Fall existed. 

It was evening ; I stood on the heights of Trollhatta's 
old sluices, and saw the ships with outspread sails glide 
away over the meadows like large white spectres. The 
sluice-gates opened with a heavy, crashing sound like that 
related of the copper gates of the Vehmgericht ; the evening 
was so still ; in the deep silence the tone of the Trollhatta 
Fall was like a chorus of a hundred water-mills, ever one 
and the same tone and sometimes the ringing of a deep and 
mighty note that seemed to pass through the very earth — 
and yet through all this the eternal silence of Nature was 
felt ; — suddenly a great bird with heavily flapping wings 
flew out of the trees in the deep woods towards the water- 
fall. Was it the mountain sprite ? We must believe so. 

Pictures of Sweden (Leipzig, 1851). 



THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 

C. F. GORDON-CUMMING 

PROBABLY the greatest chasm in the known world 
is the grand canyon of the Colorado river (the Rio 
Colorado Grande), which is a gorge upward of two hun- 
dred miles in length, and of tremendous depth. Through- 
out this distance its vertical crags measure from one to up- 
wards of six thousand feet in depth ! Think of it ! The 
highest mountain in Scotland measures 4,418 feet. The 
height of Niagara is 145 feet. And here is a narrow, tor- 
tuous pass where the river has eaten its way to a depth of 
6,200 feet between vertical granite crags ! 

Throughout this canyon there is no cascade ; and though 
the river descends 16,000 feet within a very short distance, 
forming rushing rapids, it is nevertheless possible to de- 
scend it by a raft — and this has actually been done, in defi- 
ance of the most appalling dangers and hardships. It is 
such a perilous adventure as to be deemed worthy of note 
even in this country, where every prospector carries his life 
in his hand, and to whom danger is the seasoning of daily 
life, which, without it, would appear positively monotonous. 

I suppose no river in the world passes through scenery 
so extraordinary as does the Colorado river, in its journey 
of 2,000 miles from its birthplace in the Rocky mountains, 




THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO. 



THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 1 35 

till, traversing the burning plains of New Mexico, it ends 
its course in the Gulf of California. Its early career is 
uneventful. In its youth it bears a maiden name, and, as 
the Green river, wends it way joyously through the upper 
forests. Then it reaches that ghastly country known as 
the mauvaises terres of Utah and Arizona — a vast region — 
extending also into Nevada and Wyoming, which, by the 
ceaseless action of water, has been carried into an intricate 
labyrinth of deep gloomy caverns. 

For a distance of one thousand miles the river winds its 
tortuous course through these stupendous granite gorges, 
receiving the waters of many tributary streams, each rush- 
ing along similar deeply hewn channels. 

In all the range of fiction no adventures can be devised 
more terrible than those which have actually befallen gold- 
seekers and hunters who, from any cause, have strayed into 
this dreary and awesome region. It was first discovered by 
two bold explorers, by name Strobe and White, who, be- 
ing attacked by Indians, took refuge in the canyons. Pre- 
ferring to face unknown dangers to certain death at the 
hands of the enemy, they managed to collect enough tim- 
ber to construct a rude raft, and determined to attempt 
the descent. 

Once embarked on that awful journey, there was no re- 
turning — they must endure to the bitter end. 

On the fourth day the raft was upset. Strobe was 
drowned, and the little store of provisions and ammunition 
was lost. White contrived to right the raft, and for ten 
days the rushing waters bore him down the frightful chasm, 



136 THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 

seeing only the perpendicular cliffs on either side, and the 
strip of sky far overheard — never knowing, from hour to 
hour, but that at the next winding of the canyon the stream 
might overleap some mighty precipice, and so end his long 
anguish. During those awful ten days of famine, a few 
leaves and seed-pods, clutched from the bushes on the 
rocks, were his only food. 

At length he reached a wretched settlement of half- 
bred Mexicans, who, deeming his escape miraculous, fed 
him ; and eventually he reached the homes of white men, 
who looked on him (as well they might) as on one returned 
from the grave. The life thus wonderfully saved, was, 
however, sacrificed a few months later, when he fell into 
the hands of his old Indian foes. 

The story of White's adventure was confirmed by vari- 
ous trappers and prospectors, who, from time to time, ven- 
tured some little way into this mysterious rock-labyrinth ; 
and it was determined to attempt a government survey of 
the region. Accordingly, in 1869, a party, commanded by 
Major J. W. Powell, started on this most interesting but 
dangerous expedition. Warned by the fate of a party who 
attempted to explore the country in 1855, and who, with 
the exception of two men (Ashley and another), all perished 
miserably, the government party started with all possible 
precautions. 

Four light Chicago-built boats were provisioned for six 
months, and, with infinite difficulty, were transported 1,500 
miles across the desert. On reaching their starting-point, 
they were lowered into the awful ravines, from which it 



THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 1 37 

was, to say the least, problematic whether all would emerge 
alive. The dangers, great enough in reality, had been 
magnified by rumour. It was reported, with every sem- 
blance of probability, that the river formed terrible whirl- 
pools — that it flowed underground for hundreds of miles, 
and emerged only to fall in mighty cataracts and appalling 
rapids. Even the friendly Indians entreated the explorers 
not to attempt so rash an enterprise, assuring them that 
none who embarked on that stream would escape alive. 

But in the face of all such counsel, the expedition started, 
and for upwards of three months the party travelled, one 
may almost say in the bowels of the earth — at least in her 
deepest furrows — through canyons where the cliffs rise, 
sheer from the water, to a height of three-quarters of 
a mile ! 

They found, as was only natural, that imagination had 
exaggerated the horrors of the situation, and that it was 
possible to follow the rock-girt course of the Colorado 
through all its wanderings — not without danger, of course. 
In many places the boat had to be carried. One was 
totally wrecked and its cargo lost, and the others came to 
partial grief, entailing the loss of valuable instruments, and 
almost more precious lives. Though no subterranean pas- 
sage was discovered, nor any actual waterfall, there were, 
nevertheless, such dangerous rapids as to necessitate fre- 
quent troublesome portage; and altogether, the expedition 
had its full share of adventure. 

The ground was found to vary considerably. In some 
places the rock is so vivid in colour — red and orange — that 



138 THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 

the canyons were distinguished as the Red Canyon and the 
Flaming Gorge. Some are mere fissures of tremendous 
depth ; while in other places, where the water has carved 
its way more freely, they are broad, here and there expand- 
ing into a fertile oasis, where green turf and lovely groves 
are enclosed by stupendous crags — miniature Yosemites — 
which to these travellers appeared to be indeed visions of 
Paradise. 

Granite Crags (Edinburgh and London, 1884). 



THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR 

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE 

IT was a lovely day, and a calm sea, which was a great 
subject of rejoicing, for even as it was the rickety 
Spanish vessel rolled disagreeably. Owing to the miser- 
able slowness of everything, we were eleven hours on 
board. There was little interest till we reached the yellow 
headland of Trafalgar. Then the rugged outlines of the 
African coast rose before us, and we entered the straits, be- 
tween Tarifa sleeping amid its orange groves on the Span- 
ish coast, and the fine African peak above Ceuta. Soon, 
on the left, the great rock of Gibraltar rose from the sea 
like an island, though not the most precipitous side, which 
turns inwards towards the Mediterranean. But it was al- 
ready gun-fire, and too late to join another steamer and 
land at the town, so we waited for a shoal of small boats 
which put out from Algeciras, and surrounded our steamer 
to carry us on shore. 

Here we found in the Fonda Inglesa (kept by an Eng- 
lish landlady), one of the most primitive but charming 
little hotels we ever entered. The view from our rooms 
alone decided us to stay there some days. Hence, framed 
by the balcony, Gibraltar rose before us in all the glory of 
its rugged sharp-edged cliffs, grey in the morning, pink in 



140 THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR 

the evening light, with the town at its foot, whence, at 
night, thousands of lights were reflected on the still water. 
In the foreground were groups of fishing-boats at anchor, 
and, here and there, a lateen sail flitted, like a white 
albatross, across the bay. On the little pier beneath us 
was endless life and movement, knots of fishermen, in 
their blue shirts and scarlet caps and sashes, mingling with 
solemn-looking Moors in turbans, yellow slippers, and 
flowing burnouses, who were watching the arrival or em- 
barcation of their wares ; and an endless variety of trav- 
ellers from all parts of Europe, waiting for different 
steamers, or come over to see the place. Here an invalid 
might stay, imbibing health from the fine air and sunshine, 
and never be weary of the ever changing diorama. In 
every direction delightful walks wind along the cliffs 
through groves of aloes and prickly-pear, or descend into 
little sandy coves full of beautiful shells. Behind the 
town, a fine old aqueduct strides across the valley, and be- 
yond it the wild moors begin at once sweeping backwards 
to a rugged chain of mountains. Into the gorges of these 
mountains we rode one day, and most delightful they are, 
clothed in parts with magnificent old cork-trees, while 
in the depths of a ravine, overhung with oleander and 
rhododendron, is a beautiful waterfall. 

It was with real regret that we left Algeciras and made 
the short voyage across the bay to Gibraltar, where we in- 
stantly found ourselves in a place as unlike Spain as it is 
possible to imagine. Upon the wharf you are assailed by 
a clamour of English-speaking porters and boatmen. 



THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR 141 

Passing the gates, you come upon a barrack-yard swarming 
with tall British soldiers, looking wonderfully bright and 
handsome, after the insignificant figures and soiled, shabby 
uniforms of the Spanish army. Hence the Waterport 
Street opens, the principal thoroughfare of the town, 
though from its insignificant shops, with English names, 
and its low public-houses, you have to look up at the strip 
of bright blue sky above, to be reminded that you are not 
in an English seaport. 

Just outside the principal town, between it and the 
suburb of Europe, is the truly beautiful Alameda, an im- 
mense artificial garden, where endless gravel paths wind 
through labyrinths of geraniums and coronella and banks 
of flame-coloured ixia, which are all in their full blaze of 
beauty under the March sun, though the heat causes them 
to wither and droop before May. During our stay at 
Gibraltar, it has never ceased to surprise us that this 
Alameda, the shadiest and pleasantest place open to the 
public upon the Rock, should be almost deserted ; but so 
it is. Even when the band playing affords an additional 
attraction, there are not a dozen persons to listen to it ; 
whereas at Rome on such occasions, the Pincio, exceed- 
ingly inferior as a public garden, would be crowded to 
suffocation, and always presents a lively and animated 
scene. 

One succession of gardens occupies the western base of 
the Rock, and most luxuriant and gigantic are the flowers 
that bloom in them. Castor-oil plants, daturas, and 
daphnes, here attain the dignity of timber, while geraniums 



142 THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR 

and heliotropes many years old, so large as to destoy all 
the sense of floral proportions which has hitherto existed 
in your mind. It is a curious characteristic, and typical of 
Gibraltar, that the mouth of a cannon is frequently found 
protruding from a thicket of flowers. 

The eastern side of the Rock, in great part a per- 
pendicular precipice, is elsewhere left uncultivated, and 
is wild and striking in the highest degree. Here, beyond 
the quaint Jewish cemetery of closely set gravestones, bear- 
ing Hebrew inscriptions on the open hillside, a rugged path 
winds through rocks and tangled masses of flowers and 
palmists, to a curious stalactitic cavern called Martin's Cave. 
On this side of the cliff" a remnant of the famous " apes 
of Tarshish " is suffered to remain wild and unmolested, 
though their numbers, always very small, have lately been 
reduced by the very ignorant folly of a young officer, 
who shot one and wounded nine others, for which he has 
been very properly impounded. 

On the northern side of the Rock are the famous 
galleries tunnelled in the face of the precipice, with cannon 
pointing towards Spain from their embrasures. Through 
these, or, better, by delightful paths, fringed with palmettos 
and asphodel, you may reach El Hacho, the signal station, 
whence the view is truly magnificent over the sea, and the 
mountain chains of two continents, and down into the blue 
abysses beneath the tremendous precipice upon which it is 
placed. 

The greatest drawback to the charms of Gibraltar has 
seemed to be the difficulty of leaving it. It is a beautiful 



THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR 1 43 

prison. We came fully intending to ride over the moun- 
tain passes by Ronda, but on arriving we heard that the 
whole of that district was in the hands of the brigands 
under the famous chief Don Diego, and the Governor posi- 
tively refused to permit us to go that way. Our 
lamentations at this have since been cut short by the news 
of a double murder at the hands of the brigands on the 
way we wished to have taken, and at the very time we 
should have taken it. So we must go to Malaga by sea, 
and wait for the happy combination of a good steamer and 
calm weather falling on the same day. 

Late in the afternoon of the 15th of March we em- 
barked on board the Lisbon in the dockyard of Gibraltar. 
It had been a lovely day, and the grand Rock had looked 
its best, its every cleft filled with flowers and foliage. The 
sun set before we had rounded Europe Point, and the pre- 
cipitous cliffs of the eastern bay rose utterly black against 
the yellow sky. 

Wanderings in Spain (London, 1873). 



THINGVALLA 

LORD DUFFERIN 

T last I have seen the famous Geysers, of which 
every one has heard so much ; but I have also 
seen Thingvalla, of which no one has heard anything. 
The Geysers are certainly wonderful marvels of nature, but 
more wonderful, more marvellous is Thingvalla; and if the 
one repay you for crossing the Spanish Sea, it would be 
worth while to go round the world to reach the other. 

Of the boiling fountains I think I can give you a good 
idea, but whether I can contrive to draw for you anything 
like a comprehensible picture of the shape and nature of 
the Almanna Gja, the Hrafna Gja, and the lava vale, called 
Thingvalla, that lies between them, I am doubtful. Before 
coming to Iceland I had read every account that had been 
written of Thingvalla by any former traveller, and when I 
saw it, it appeared to me a place of which I had never 
heard ; so I suppose I shall come to grief in as mel- 
ancholy a manner as my predecessors, whose ineffectual 
pages whiten the entrance to the valley they have failed to 
describe. 

After an hour's gradual ascent through a picturesque 
ravine, we emerged upon an immense desolate plateau of 
lava, that stretched away for miles and miles like a great 



THING VALLA 1 45 

stony sea. A more barren desert you cannot conceive. 
Innumerable boulders, relics of the glacial period, encum- 
bered the track. We could only go at a foot-pace. Not 
a blade of grass, not a strip of green, enlivened the pros- 
pect, and the only sound we heard was the croak of the 
curlew and the wail of the plover. Hour after hour we 
plodded on, but the grey waste seemed interminable, 
boundless : and the only consolation Sigurdr would vouch- 
safe was that our journey's end lay on this side of some 
purple mountains that peeped like the tents of a demon 
leaguer above the stony horizon. 

As it was already eight o'clock, and we had been told the 
entire distance from Reykjavik to.Thingvalla was only five- 
and-thirty miles, I could not comprehend how so great a 
space should still separate us from our destination. Con- 
cluding more time had been lost in shooting, lunching, etc., 
by the way than we supposed, I put my pony into a canter, 
and determined to make short work of the dozen miles 
which seemed still to lie between us and the hills, on this 
side of which I understood from Sigurdr our encampment 
for the night was to be pitched. 

Judge then of my astonishment when, a few minutes 
afterwards, I was arrested in full career by a tremendous 
precipice, or rather chasm, which suddenly gaped beneath 
my feet, and completely separated the barren plateau we 
had been so painfully traversing from a lovely, gay, sunlit 
flat, ten miles broad, that lay, — sunk at a level lower by a 
hundred feet, — between us and the opposite mountains. I 
was never so completely taken by surprise ; Sigurdr's 



146 THING VALLA 

purposely vague description of our halting-place was ac- 
counted for. 

We had reached the famous Almanna Gja. Like a black 
rampart in the distance, the corresponding chasm of the 
Hrafna Gja cut across the lower sloop of the distant hills, 
and between them now slept in sunshine and beauty the 
broad verdant plain 1 of Thingvalla. 

Ages ago, — who shall say how long, — some vast com- 
motion shook the foundations of the island, and bubbling 
up from sources far away amid the inland hills, a fiery del- 
uge must have rushed down between their ridges, until, 
escaping from the narrow gorges, it found space to spread 
itself into one broad sheet of molten stone over an entire 
district of country, reducing its varied surface to one vast 
blackened level. 

One of two things then occurred : either the vitri- 
fied mass contracting as it cooled, — the centre area of fifty 
square miles burst asunder at either side from the adjoining 
plateau, and sinking down to its present level, left the two 
paralleled Gjas, or chasms, which form its lateral boundaries, 
to mark the limits of the disruption ; or else, while the 
pith or marrow of the lava was still in a fluid state, its 
upper surface became solid, and formed a roof beneath 
which the molten stream flowed on to lower levels, leaving 
a vast cavern into which the upper crust subsequently 
plumped down. 

But to return where I left myself, on the edge of the 

1 The plain of Thingvalla is in a great measure clothed with birch 
brushwood. 



THING VALLA 1 47 

cliff, gazing down with astonished eyes over a panorama 
of land and water imbedded at my feet. I could scarcely 
speak for pleasure and surprise ; Fitz was equally taken 
aback, and as for Wilson, he looked as if he thought we 
had arrived at the end of the world. After having allowed 
us sufficient time to admire the prospect, Sigurdr turned to 
the left, along the edge of the precipice, until we reached a 
narrow pathway accidentally formed down a longitudinal 
niche in the splintered face of the cliff, which led across 
the bottom, and up the opposite side of the Gja, into the 
plain of Thingvalla. 

Independently of its natural curiosities, Thingvalla was 
most interesting to me on account of the historical asso- 
ciations connected with it. Here, long ago, at a period 
when feudal despotism was the only government known 
throughout Europe, free parliaments used to sit in peace, and 
regulate the affairs of the young Republic ; and to this hour 
the precincts of its Commons House of Parliament are as 
distinct and unchanged as on the day when the high-hearted 
fathers of the emigration first consecrated them to the serv- 
ice of a free nation. By a freak of nature, as the subsid- 
ing plain cracked and shivered into twenty thousand fissures, 
an irregular oval area, of about two hundred feet by fifty, 
was left almost entirely surrounded by a crevice so deep 
and broad as to be utterly impassable ; — at one extremity 
alone a scanty causeway connected it with the adjoining 
level, and allowed of access to its interior. It is true, just 
at one point the encircling chasm grows so narrow as to be 
within the possibility of a jump ; and an ancient worthy, 



148 THINGVALLA 

named Flosi, pursued by his enemies, did actually take it at a 
fly : but as leaping an inch short would have entailed certain 
drowning in the bright green waters that sleep forty feet be- 
low, you can conceive there was never much danger of this 
entrance becoming a thoroughfare. I confess that for one 
moment, while contemplating the scene of Flosi's exploit, 
I felt, like a true Briton, — an idiotic desire to be able to say 
that I had done the same ; — that I survive to write this letter 
is a proof of my having come subsequently to my senses. 

This spot, then, erected by nature almost into a fortress, 
the founders of the Icelandic constitution chose for the 
meetings of their Thing, or Parliament ; armed guards de- 
fended the entrance, while the grave bonders deliberated in 
security within : to this day, at the upper end of the place 
of meeting, may be seen the three hummocks, where sat in 
state the chiefs and judges of the land. 

But those grand old times have long since passed away. 
Along the banks of the Oxeraa no longer glisten the tents 
and booths of the assembled lieges ; no longer stalwart 
berserks guard the narrow entrance to the Althing j ravens 
alone sit on the sacred Logberg ; and the floor of the old 
Icelandic House of Commons is ignominiously cropped by 
the sheep of the parson. For three hundred years did the 
gallant little Republic maintain its independence — three 
hundred years of unequalled literary and political vigour. 
At last its day of doom drew near. Like the Scotch nobles 
in the time of Elizabeth, their own chieftains intrigued 
against the liberties of the Icelandic people; and in 1261 
the island became an appendage of the Norwegian crown. 



THINGVALLA 1 49 

Yet even then the deed embodying the concession of their 
independence was drawn up in such haughty terms as to 
resemble rather the offer of an equal alliance than the re- 
nunciation of imperial rights. 

As I gazed around on -the silent, deserted plain, and 
paced to and fro along the untrodden grass that now clothed 
the Althing, I could scarcely believe it had ever been the 
battle-field where such keen and energetic wits encoun- 
tered, — that the fire-scathed rocks I saw before me were 
the very same that had once inspired one of the most suc- 
cessful rhetorical appeals ever hazarded in a public assem- 
bly. 

From the Althing we strolled over to the Almanna Gja, 
visiting the Pool of Execution on our way. As I have 
already mentioned, a river from the plateau above leaps 
over the precipice into the bottom of the Gja, and flows 
for a certain distance between its walls. At the foot of 
the fall, the waters linger for a moment, in a dark, deep, 
brimming pool, hemmed in by a circle of ruined rocks ; to 
this pool, in ancient times, all women convicted of capital 
crimes were immediately taken, and drowned. Witchcraft 
seems to have been the principal weakness of ladies in 
those days, throughout the Scandinavian countries. For a 
long period, no disgrace was attached to its profession. 
Odin himself, we are expressly told, was a great adept, and 
always found himself very much exhausted at the end of 
his performance; which leads me to think that, perhaps, he 
dabbled in electro-biology. 

Turning aside from what, I dare say, was the scene of 



150 THINGVALLA 

many an unrecorded tragedy, we descended the gorge of the 
Almanna Gja, towards the lake ; and I took advantage of the 
opportunity again to examine its marvellous construction. 
The perpendicular walls of rock rose on either hand from 
the flat greensward that carpeted its bottom, pretty much 
as the waters of the Red Sea must have risen on each side 
of the fugitive Israelites. A blaze of light smote the face 
of one clifF, while the other lay in the deepest shadow ; 
and on the rugged surface of each might still be traced cor- 
responding articulations, that once had dovetailed into each 
other, ere the igneous mass was rent asunder. So un- 
changed, so recent seemed the vestiges of this convulsion, 
that I felt as if I had been admitted to witness one of 
nature's grandest and most violent operations, almost in the 
very act of its execution. A walk of about twenty min- 
utes brought us to the borders of the lake — a glorious ex- 
panse of water, fifteen miles long, by eight miles broad, 
occupying a basin formed by the same hills, which must 
also, I imagine, have arrested the further progress of the 
lava torrent. A lovelier scene I have seldom witnessed. 
In the foreground lay huge masses of rock and lava, 
tossed about like the ruins of a world, and washed by 
waters as bright and green as polished malachite. Beyond, 
a bevy of distant mountains, robed by the transparent atmos- 
phere in tints unknown to Europe, peeped over each other's 
shoulders into the silver mirror at their feet, while here and 
there from among their purple ridges columns of white 
vapour rose like altar smoke towards the tranquil heaven. 
The next morning we started for the Geysers ; this time 



THINGVALLA 151 

dividing the baggage-train, and sending on the cook in light 
marching order, with the materials for dinner. The 
weather still remained unclouded, and each mile we ad- 
vanced disclosed some new wonder in the unearthly land- 
scape. A three hours' ride brought us to the Rabna Gja, 
the eastern boundary of Thingvalla, and, winding up its 
rugged face, we took our last look over the lovely plain 
beneath us, and then manfully set across the same kind of 
arid lava plateau as that which we had already traversed 
before arriving at the Almanna Gja. 

Letters from High Latitude, being some account of a voyage 
in the schooner yacht Foam in 1836 (London, 1859). 



LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 

JOHN AYRTON PARIS 

" The sunbeams tremble, and the purple light 
Illumes the dark Bolerium ; — seat of storms, 
High are his granite rocks ; his frowning brow 
Hangs o'er the smiling ocean. In his caves, 
Where sleep the haggard spirits of the storm, 
Wild dreary are the schistose rocks around, 
Encircled by the waves, where to the breeze 
The haggard cormorant shrieks ; and far beyond 
Are seen the cloud-like islands, grey in mists." 

Sir H. Daw. 

IN an excursion to the Land's End the traveller will meet 
with several intermediate objects well worthy his at- 
tention, more worthy, perhaps, than the celebrated promon- 
tory itself, as being monuments of the highest antiquity in 
the kingdom. They consist of Druidical circles, cairns, 
or circular heaps of stones, cromlechs, crosses, military 
entrenchments, and the obsure remains of castles. 

Having arrived at the celebrated promontory, we descend 
a rapid slope, which brings us to a bold group of rocks, 
composing the western extremity of our island. Some 
years ago a military officer who visited this spot, was rash 
enough to descend on horseback ; the horse soon became 
unruly, plunged, reared, and, fearful to relate, fell back- 
wards over the precipice, and rolling from rock to rock was 



LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 1 53 

dashed to atoms before it reached the sea. The rider was 
for some time unable to disengage himself, but at length by 
a desperate effort he threw himself off, and was happily- 
caught by some fragments of rock, at the very brink of 
the precipice, where he remained in a state of insensibility 
until assistance could be afforded him ! The awful spot is 
marked by the figure of a horseshoe, traced on the turf 
with a deep incision, which is cleared out from time to 
time, in order to preserve it as a monument of rashness 
which could alone be equalled by the good fortune with 
which it was attended. 

Why any promontory in an island should be exclusively 
denominated the Land's End, it is difficult to understand ; 
yet so powerful is the charm of a name, that many persons 
have visited it on no other account ; the intelligent tourist, 
however, will receive a much more substantial gratification 
from his visit ; the great geological interest of the spot will 
afford him an ample source of entertainment and instruc- 
tion, while the magnificence of its convulsed scenery, the 
ceaseless roar, and deep intonation of the ocean, and the 
wild shrieks of the cormorant, all combine to awaken the 
blended sensations of awe and admiration. 

The cliff which bounds this extremity is rather abrupt 
than elevated, not being more than sixty feet above the 
level of the sea. It is composed entirely of granite, the 
forms of which present a very extraordinary appearance, 
assuming in some places the resemblance of shafts that had 
been regularly cut with the chisel ; in others, regular equi- 
distant fissures divide the rock into horizontal masses, and 



154 LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 

give it the character of basaltic columns ; in other places, 
again, the impetuous waves of the ocean have opened, for 
their retreat, gigantic arches, through which the angry bil- 
lows roll and bellow with tremendous fury. 

Several of these rocks from their grotesque forms have 
acquired whimsical appellations, as that of the Armed Knight, 
the Irish Lady, etc. An inclining rock on the side of a 
craggy headland, south of the Land's End, has obtained the 
name of Dr. 'Johnson's Head, and visitors after having heard 
the appellation seldom fail to acknowledge that it bears 
some resemblance to the physiognomy of that extraordi- 
nary man. 

On the north, this rocky scene is terminated by a prom- 
ontory 229 feet above the level of the sea, called Cape Corn- 
wall, between which and the Land's End, the coast retires, 
and forms Whitesand Bay; a name which it derives from the 
peculiar whiteness of the sand, and amongst which the 
naturalist will find several rare microscopic shells. There 
are, besides, some historical recollections which invest this 
spot with interest. It was in this bay that Stephen landed 
on his first arrival in England ; as did King John, on his 
return from Ireland ; and Perkin Warbeck, in the prosecu- 
tion of those claims to the Crown to which some late writers 
have been disposed to consider that he was entitled, as the 
real son of Edward the Fourth. In the rocks near the 
southern termination of Whitesand Bay may be seen the 
junction of the granite and slate; large veins of the 
former may also be observed to traverse the latter in all 
directions. 



LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 1 55 

We now return to the Land's End, — from which we 
should proceed to visit a promontory called " Castle 
Treryn," where is situated the celebrated " Logan Stone." 
If we pursue our route along the cliffs, it will be found to 
be several miles southeast of the Land's End, although by 
taking the direct and usual road across the country, it is not 
more than two miles distant ; but the geologist must walk, 
or ride along the coast on horseback, and we can assure 
him that he will be amply recompensed for his trouble. 

From the Cape on which the signal station is situated, 
the rock scenery is particularly magnificent, exhibiting an 
admirable specimen of the manner, and forms, into which 
granite disintegrates. About forty yards from this Cape is 
the promontory called Tol-Pedn-Penwith, which in the 
Cornish language signifies the holed headland in Penwith. 
The name is derived from a singular chasm, known by the 
appellation of the Funnel Rock ; it is a vast perpendicular 
excavation in the granite, resembling in figure an inverted 
cone, and has been evidently produced by the gradual de- 
composition of one of those vertical veins with which this 
part of the coast is so frequently intersected. By a circui- 
tous route you may descend to the bottom of the cavern, 
into which the sea flows at high water. Here the Cornish 
chough {Corvus Graculus) has built its nest for several years, 
a bird which is very common about the rocky parts of this 
coast, and may be distinguished by its red legs and bill, and 
the violaceous blackness of its feathers. This promontory 
forms the western extremity of the Mount's Bay. The 
antiquary will discover in this spot, the vestiges of one of 



156 LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 

the ancient " Cliff Castles," which were little else than 
stone walls, stretching across necks of land from cliff to 
cliff. The only geological phenomenon worthy of particu- 
lar notice is a large and beautiful contemporaneous vein of 
red granite containing schorl ; is one foot in width, and may 
be seen for about forty feet in length. 

Continuing our route around the coast we at length ar- 
rive at Castle Treryn. Its name is derived from the sup- 
position of its having been the site of an ancient British 
fortress, of which there are still some obscure traces, 
although the wild and rugged appearance of the rocks in- 
dicate nothing like art. 

The foundation of the whole is a stupendous group of 
granite rocks, which rise in pyramidal clusters to a pro- 
digious altitude, and overhang the sea. On one of those 
pyramids is situated the celebrated " Logan Stone," which 
is an immense block of granite weighing about sixty tons. 
The surface in contact with the under rock is of very 
small extent, and the whole mass is so nicely balanced, 
that, notwithstanding its magnitude, the strength of a single 
man applied to its under edge is sufficient to change its 
centre of gravity, and though at first in a degree scarcely 
perceptible, yet the repetition of such impulses, at each re- 
turn of the stone, produces at length a very sensible 
oscillation ! As soon as the astonishment which this 
phenomenon excites has in some measure subsided, the 
stranger anxiously inquires how, and whence the stone 
originated — was it elevated by human means, or was it 
produced by the agency of natural causes ? Those who 



LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 1 57 

are in the habit of viewing mountain masses with geolog- 
ical eyes, will readily discover that the only chisel ever em- 
ployed has been the tooth of time — the only artist engaged, 
the elements. Granite usually disintegrates into rhomboidal 
and tabular masses, which by the farther operation of air 
and moisture gradually lose their solid angles, and approach 
the spheroidal form. De Luc observed, in the giant moun- 
tains of Silesia, spheroids of this description so piled upon 
each other as to resemble Dutch cheeses ; and appearances, 
no less illustrative of the phenomenon, may be seen from 
the signal station to which we have just alluded. The fact 
of the upper part of the cliff being more exposed to at- 
mospheric agency, than the parts beneath, will sufficiently 
explain why these rounded masses so frequently rest on 
blocks which still preserve the tabular form ; and since 
such spheroidal blocks must obviously rest in that position 
in which their lesser axes are perpendicular to the horizon, 
it is equally evident that whenever an adequate force is ap- 
plied they must vibrate on their point of support. 

Although we are thus led to deny the Druidical origin of 
this stone, for which so many zealous antiquaries have con- 
tended, still we by no means intend to deny that the Druids 
employed it as an engine of superstition ; it is indeed very 
probable that, having observed so uncommon a property, 
they dexterously contrived to make it answer the purposes 
of an ordeal, and by regarding it as the touchstone of truth, 
acquitted or condemned the accused by its motions. Mason 
poetically alludes to this supposed property in the following 
lines : 



158 LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 

" Behold yon huge 
And unknown sphere of living adamant, 
Which, pois'd by magic, rests its central weight 
On yonder pointed rock : firm as it seems, 
Such is its strange, and virtuous property, 
It moves obsequious to the gentlest touch 
Of him whose heart is pure, but to a traitor, 
Tho' e'en a giant's prowess nerv'd his arm, 
It stands as fix'd as — Snowdon." 

The rocks are covered with a species of Byssus long and 
rough to the touch, forming a kind of hoary beard; in 
many places they are deeply furrowed, carrying with them 
a singular air of antiquity, which combines with the whole 
of the romantic scenery to awaken in the minds of the 
poet and enthusiast the recollection of the Druidical ages. 
The botanist will observe the common Thrift {Statue 
Armerid) imparting a glowing tinge to the scanty vegeta- 
tion of the spot, and, by growing within the crevices of 
the rocks, affording a very picturesque contrast to their 
massive fabric. Here, too, the Daucus Maritimus, or wild 
carrot ; Sedum Telephiwn, Saxifraga Stellaris, and Asplenium 
Marinum, may be found in abundance. 

The granite in this spot is extremely beautiful on ac- 
count of its porphyrinic appearance ; the crystals of feldspar 
are numerous and distinct ; in some places the rock is 
traversed by veins of red feldspar, and of black tourmaline, 
or schorl, of which the crystalline forms of the prisms, on 
account of their close aggregation, are very indistinct. 
Here may also be observed a contemporaneous vein of 
schorl rock in the granite, nearly two feet wide, highly in- 
clined and very short, and not having any distinct walls. 



LAND'S END AND LOGAN ROCK 1 59 

On the western side of the Logan Rock is a cavern, 
formed by the decomposition of a vein of granite, the 
feldspar of which assumes a brilliant flesh-red and lilac 
colour; and, where it is polished by the sea, exceeding 
even in beauty the Serpentine caverns at the Lizard. 

A Guide to the Mount 's Bay and the Land's End (London, 
2d Ed., 1824). 



MOUNT HEKLA 1 

SIR RICHARD F. BURTON 

THE Hekla of our ingenuous childhood, when we be- 
lieved in the "Seven Wonders of the World," was 
a mighty cone, a " pillar of heaven," upon whose dreadful 
summit white, black, and sanguine red lay in streaks and 
patches, with volumes of sooty smoke and lurid flames, 
and a pitchy sky. The whole was somewhat like the im- 
possible illustrations of Vesuvian eruptions, in body-colours, 
plus the ice proper to Iceland. The Hekla of reality, No. 5 
in the island scale, is a commonplace heap, half the height 
of Hermon, and a mere pigmy compared with the Andine 
peaks, rising detached from the plains, about three and a 
half miles in circumference, backed by the snows of 
Tindafjall and Torfajokull, and supporting a sky-line that 
varies greatly with the angle under which it is seen. 
Travellers usually make it a three-horned Parnassus, with 
the central knob highest — which is not really the case. 
From the south-west, it shows now four, then five, distinct 

1 Heklu-fjall derives from Hekla (akin to Hokull, a priest's cope), mean- 
ing a cowled or hooded frock, knitted of various colours, and applied to 
the " Vesuvius of the North " from its cap and body vest of snow. 
Icelanders usually translate it a chasuble, because its rounded black 
shoulders bear stripes of white, supposed to resemble the cross carried to 
Calvary. 



MOUNT HEKLA l6l 

points ; the north-western lip of the northern crater, which 
hides the true apex; the south-western lip of the same; the 
north-eastern lip of the southern Crater, which appears the 
culminating point, and the two eastern edges of the south- 
ern bowls. A pair of white patches represents the " eternal 
snows." On the right of the picture is the steep, but 
utterly unimportant Thrihyrningr, crowned with its bench- 
mark ; to the left, the Skardsfjall, variegated green and 
black; and in the centre, the Bjolfell, a western buttress of 
the main building, which becomes alternately a saddleback, 
a dorsum, and an elephant's head, trunk, and shoulders. 

We came upon the valley of the Western Ranga 1 at a 
rough point, a gash in the hard yellow turf-clad clay, dotted 
with rough lava blocks, and with masses of conglomerate, 
hollowed, turned, and polished by water: the shape was a 
succession of S, and the left side was the more tormented. 
Above the ford a dwarf cascade had been formed by the 
lava of '45, which caused the waters to boil, and below the 
ford jumped a second, where the stream forks. We then 
entered an Iceland " forest," at least four feet high ; the 
"chapparal" was composed of red willow (Salix purpurea), 
of Gra-vidir, woolly-leaved willow {Sulix lapponurn), the 
" tree under which the devil flayed the goats " — a 
diabolical difficulty, when the bush is a foot high — and the 
awful and venerable birch, " la demoiselle des fbrets" which 
has so often "blushed with patrician blood." About mid- 

1 Ranga ("wrong," or crooked stream) is a name that frequently oc- 
curs, and generally denotes either that the trend is opposed to the general 
water-shed, or that an angle has been formed in the bed by earthquakes 
or eruptions. 



162 MOUNT HEKLA 

afternoon we reached Xaefrholt (birch-bark hill), the 
" fashionable " place for the ascent, and we at once in- 
quired for the guide. Upon the carpe diem principle, he 
had gone to Revkjavik with the view of drinking his late 
gains; but we had time to organize another, and e en 
alpenstocks with rings and spikes are to be found at the 
farm-house. Even-thing was painfuliv tourist. 

In the evening we scaled the stiff slope of earth and 
Palagonite which lies behind, or east of Xaefrholt; this 
crupper of Bjolfell, the Elephant Mountain, gives perhaps 
harder work than anv part of Hekla on the normal line of 
ascent. From the summit we looked down upon a dwarf 
basin, with a lakelet of fresh water, which had a slightlv 
(carbonic ) acid taste, and which must have contained lime, 
as we found two kinds of shells, both uncommonlv thin 
and fragile. Three species of weeds floated off the clean 
sandstrips. Walking northward to a deserted bvre, we 
found the drain gushing under ground from sand and rock, 
forming a distinct river-vallev, and eventuallv feeding the 
Western Ranga. This "Vatn" is not in the map; though 
far from certain that it is not mentioned bv Mackenzie, we 
named it the " Unknown Lake." Before night fell we re- 
ceived a message that three English girls and their partv 
proposed to join us. This was a " scare," but happily the 
Miss Hopes proved pluckv as thev were voung and prettv, 
and we rejoiced in offering this pleasant affront of the 
feminine foot to that grim old sslitaire, Father Hekla. 

Before the sleep necessarv to prepare for the next dav's 
work, I will offer a few words concerning the M Etna of 



MOUNT HEKLA 1 63 

the North," sparing the reader, however, the mortification 
of a regular history. It was apparently harmless, possibly 
dormant, till a. d. 1104, when Ssmund, the "Paris clerk," 
then forty-eight years old, threw in a casket, and awoke 
the sleeping lion. Since that time fourteen regular erup- 
tions, without including partial outbreaks are recorded, 
giving an average of about two per century. The last was 
in 1845. The air at Reykjavik was flavoured, it is said, 
like a gun that wants washing ; and the sounds of a distant 
battle were conducted by the lava and basaltic ground. 
The ashes extended to Scotland. When some writers tell 
us that on this occasion Hekla lost 500 feet in height, " so 
much of the summit having been blown away by the ex- 
plosions," they forget or ignore the fact that the new crater 
opened laterally and low down. 

Like Etna, Vesuvius, and especially Stromboli, Hekla 
became mythical in Middle-Age Europe, and gained wide 
repute as one of the gates of " Hel-viti." Witches' Sab- 
baths were held there. The spirits of the wicked, driven 
by those grotesque demons of Father Pinamonti which 
would make the fortune of a zoological societv, were seen 
trooping into the infernal crater; and such facts as these do 
not readilv slip off the mind of man. The Danes still say 
" Begone to Heckenfjaeld ! " the North Germans, " Go to 
Hackelberg ! " and the Scotch consign you to " John 
Hacklebirnie's house." Even Goldsmith (Animated 
Nature, i. 48) had heard of the local creed, " The inhabi- 
tants of Iceland believe the bellowings of Hekla are noth- 
ing else but the cries of the damned, and that its eruptions 



164 MOUNT HEKLA 

are contrived to increase their tortures." Uno Van Troil 
(Letter I.) who in 1770, together with those " inclyti Brit- 
tannici," Baron Bank and Dr. Solander, " gained the pleas- 
ure of being the first who ever reached the summit of this 
celebrated volcano," attributes the mountain's virginity to 
the superstitions of the people. He writes soberly about its 
marvels; and he explains its high fame by its position, 
skirting the watery way to and from Greenland and 
North America. His companions show less modesty of 
imagination. We may concede that an unknown ascent 
" required great circumspection " ; and that in a high wind 
ascensionists were obliged to lie down. But how explain 
the " dread of being blown into the most dreadful preci- 
pices," when the latter do not exist ? Moreover, we learn 
that to " accomplish this undertaking " they had to travel 
from 300 to 360 miles over uninterrupted bursts of lava, 
which is more than the maximum length of the island, from 
northeast to southwest. As will be seen, modern travellers 
have followed suit passing well. 

The next morning (July 13) broke fair and calm, re- 
minding me 

" Del bel paese la dove 11 si suona." 

The Miss Hopes were punctual to a minute — an excel- 
lent thing in travelling womanhood. We rode up half-way 
somewhat surprised to find so few parasitic craters ; the 
only signs of independent eruption on the western flank 
were the Raudkolar (red hills), as the people call their lava 
hornitos and spiracles, which are little bigger than the 
bottle-house cones of Leith. 



MOUNT HEKLA 1 65 

At an impassable divide we left our poor nags to pass the 
dreary time, without water or forage, and we followed the 
improvised guide, who caused not a little amusement. His 
general port was that of a bear that has lost its ragged staff. — 
I took away his alpenstock for one of the girls — and he 
was plantigrade rather than cremnobatic; he had stripped 
to his underalls, which were very short, whilst his stockings 
were very long and the heraldic gloves converted his hands 
to paws. The two little snow fonds (" steep glassy slopes 
of hard snow "), were the easiest of walking. We had 
nerved ourselves to " Break neck or limbs, be maimed or 
boiled alive," but we looked in vain for the " concealed 
abysses," for the " crevasses to be crossed," and for places 
where a " slip would be to roll to destruction." We did 
not sight the " lava wall," a capital protection against giddi- 
ness. The snow was anything but slippery ; the surface 
was scattered with dust, and it bristled with a forest of 
dwarf earth-pillars, where blown volcanic sand preserved 
the ice. After a slow hour and a half, we reached the cra- 
ter of '45, which opened at 9 a. m. on September 2, and 
discharged lava till the end of November. It might be 
passed unobserved by the inexperienced man. The only 
remnant is the upper lip prolonged to the right ; the dimen- 
sions may have been 120 by 150 yards, and the cleft shows 
a projecting ice-ledge ready to fall. The feature is well- 
marked by the new lava-field of which it is the source : the 
bristly "stone-river" is already degrading to superficial 
dust. A little beyond this bowl the ground smokes, dis- 
charging snow-steam made visible by the cold air. Hence 



1 66 MOUNT HEKLA 

doubtless those sententious travellers " experienced at one 
and the same time, a high degree of heat and cold." 

Fifteen minutes more led us to the First or Southern 
Crater, whose Ol-bogi (elbow or rim) is one of the horns 
conspicuous from below. It is a regular formation about 
ioo yards at the bottom each way, with the right (east) side 
red and cindery, and the left yellow and sulphury ; mosses 
and a few flowerets grow on the lips ; in the sole rise jets 
of steam and a rock-rib bisects it diagonally from northeast 
to southwest. We thought it the highest point of the vol- 
cano, but the aneriod corrected our mistake. 

From the First Crater we walked over the left or western 
dorsum, over which one could drive a coach, and we con- 
gratulated one another upon the exploit. Former travellers 
" balancing themselves like rope-dancers, succeeded in pass- 
ing along the ridge of slags which was so narrow that there 
was scarcely room for their feet," the breadth being " not 
more than two feet, having a precipice on each side several 
hundred feet in depth." Charity suggests that the feature 
has altered, but there was no eruption between 1766 and 
1845 ; moreover, the lip would have diminished, not in- 
creased. And one of the most modern visitors repeats the 
" very narrow ridge," with the classical but incorrect ad- 
juncts of'Scylla here, Charybdis there." Scylla (say the 
crater slope) is disposed at an angle of 30 , and Mr. Chap- 
man coolly walked down this " vast " little hollow. I 
descended Charybdis (the outer counterscarp) far enough to 
make sure that it is equally easy. 

Passing the " carriage road " (our own name), we crossed 



MOUNT HEKLA 1 67 

a neve without any necessity for digging foot-holes. It lies 
where sulphur is notably absent. The hot patches which 
account for the freedom from snow, even so high above the 
congelation-line, are scattered about the summit : in other 
parts the thermometer, placed in an eighteen-inch hole, made 
earth colder than air. After a short climb, we reached the 
apex ; the ruddy-walled northeastern lip of the Red Crater 
(No. 2) : its lower or western rim forms two of the five 
summits seen from the prairie, and hides the highest point. 
We thus ascertained that Hekla is a linear volcano of two 
mouths, or three including that of '45, and that it wants a 
true apical crater. But how reconcile the accounts of trav- 
ellers ? Pliny Miles found one cone and three craters ; 
Madam *Ida PfeifFer, like Metcalfe, three cones and no 
crater. 

On the summit the guides sang a song of triumph, whilst 
we drank to the health of our charming companions and, 
despite the cold wind which eventually drove us down, care- 
fully studied the extensive view. The glorious day was 
out of character with a scene niente che Montague^ as the 
unhappy Venetians described the Morea; rain and sleet and 
blinding snow would better have suited the picture, but 
happily they were conspicuous by their absence. Inland, 
beyond a steep snow-bed unpleasantly crevassed, lay a grim 
photograph all black and white ; Langjokull looking down 
upon us with a grand and freezing stare ; the Hrafntinnu 
Valley marked by a dwarf cone, and beyond where streams 
head, the gloomy regions stretching to the Sprengisandur, 
dreary wastes of utter sterility, howling deserts of dark ashes, 



1 68 MOUNT HEKLA 

wholly lacking water and vegetable life, and wanting the 
gleam and the glow which light up the Arabian wild. 
Skaptar and Oraefa were hidden from sight. Seawards, rang- 
ing from west to south, the view, by contrast, was a picture 
of amenity and civilization. Beyond castellated Hljodfell 
and conical Skjaldbreid appeared the familiar forms of Esja, 
and the long lava projection of the Gold Breast country, melt- 
ing into the western main. Nearer stretched the fair low- 
lands, once a broad deep bay, now traversed by the net- 
work of Olfusa, Thjorsa, and the Markarfljot ; while the 
sixfold bunch of the Westman Islands, mere stone lumps 
upon a blue ground, seemingly floating far below the raised 
horizon, lay crowned by summer sea.. Eastward we dis- 
tinctly traced the Fiskivotn. Run the eye along the southern 
shore, and again the scene shifts. Below the red hornitos of 
the slope rises the classical Three-horned, not lofty, but re- 
markable for its trident top ; Tindfjall (tooth-fell) with its 
two horns or pyramids of ice, casting blue shadows upon the 
untrodden snow ; and the whole mighty mass known as the 
Eastern Jokull Eyjafjall (island-fell), so called from the 
black button of rock which crowns the long white dorsum; 
Katla (Koltu-gja), Merkrjokull, and Godalands, all con- 
nected by ridges, and apparently neither lofty nor imprac- 
ticable. 

Ultima Thule ; or a Summer in Iceland (London and Edin- 
burgh, 1875). 



VICTORIA FALLS 

DAVID LIVINGSTONE 

WE proceeded next morning, 9th August, i860, to 
see the Victoria Falls. Mosi-oa-tunya is the 
Makololo name, and means smoke sounding ; Seongo or 
Chongwe, meaning the Rainbow, or the place of. the Rain- 
bow, was the more ancient term they bore. We embarked 
in canoes, belonging to Tuba Mokoro, " smasher of ca- 
noes," an ominous name ; but he alone, it seems, knew the 
medicine which insures one against shipwreck in the rapids 
above the Falls. For some miles the river was smooth and 
tranquil, and we glided pleasantly over water clear as 
crystal, and past lovely islands densely covered with a 
tropical vegetation. Noticeable among the many trees 
were the lofty Hyphaene and Borassus palms ; the graceful 
wild date-palm, with its fruit in golden clusters, and the 
umbrageous mokononga, of cypress form, with its dark- 
green leaves and scarlet fruit. Many flowers peeped out 
near the water's edge, some entirely new to us, and others, 
as the convolvulus, old acquaintances. 

But our attention was quickly called from the charming 
islands to the dangerous rapids, down which Tuba might 
unintentionally shoot us. To confess the truth, the very 
ugly aspect of these roaring rapids could scarcely fail to 



170 VICTORIA FALLS 

cause some uneasiness in the minds of new-comers. It is 
only when the river is very low, as it was now, that any 
one durst venture to the island to which we were bound. 
If one went during the period of flood, and fortunately hit 
the island, he would be obliged to remain there till the 
water subsided again, if he lived so long. Both hippo- 
potamus and elephants have been known to be swept over 
the Falls, and of course smashed to pulp. 

Before entering the race of waters, we were requested 
not to speak, as our talking might diminish the virtue of 
the medicine ; and no one with such boiling, eddying rapids 
before his eyes, would think of disobeying the orders of a 
" canoe-smasher." It soon became evident that there was 
sound sense in this request of Tuba's, although the reason 
assigned was not unlike that of the canoe-man from Sesheke, 
who begged one of our party not to whistle because whistling 
made the wind come. It was the duty of the man at the 
bow to look out ahead for the proper course, and when he 
saw a rock or snag to call out to the steersman. Tuba 
doubtless thought that talking on board might divert the at- 
tention of his steersman, at a time when the neglect of an 
order, or a slight mistake, would be sure to spill us all into 
the chafing river. There were places where the utmost 
exertions of both men had to be put forth in order to force 
the canoe to the only safe part of the rapid, and to prevent 
it from sweeping down broadside on, where in a twinkling 
we should have found ourselves floundering among the 
plotuses and cormorants, which were engaged in diving 
for their breakfast of small fish. At times it seemed as if 



VICTORIA FALLS 171 

nothing could save us from dashing in our headlong race 
against the rocks which, now that the river was low, jutted 
out of the water; but just at the very nick of time, Tuba 
passed the word to the steersman, and then with ready pole 
turned the canoe a little aside and we glided swiftly past the 
threatened danger. Never was canoe more admirably 
managed : once only did the medicine seem to have lost 
something of its efficacy. We were driving swiftly down, 
a black rock, over which the white foam flew, lay directly 
in our path, the pole was planted against it as readily as 
ever, but it slipped just as Tuba put forth his strength to 
turn the bow off". We struck hard, and were half-full of 
water in a moment ; Tuba recovered himself as speedily, 
shoved off" the bow, and shot the canoe into a still shallow 
place, to bale out the water. Here we were given to under- 
stand that it was not the medicine which was at fault ; that 
had lost none of its virtue ; the accident was owing en- 
tirely to Tuba having started without his breakfast. Need 
it be said we never left Tuba go without that meal again ? 

We landed at the head of Garden Island, which is 
situated near the middle of the river and on the lip of the 
Falls. On reaching that lip, and peering over the giddy 
height, the wondrous and unique character of the mag- 
nificent cascade at once burst upon us. 

It is a rather hopeless task to endeavour to convey an 
idea of it in words, since, as was remarked on the spot, an 
accomplished painter, even by a number of views, could 
but impart a faint impression of the glorious scene. The 
probable mode of its formation may perhaps help to the 



172 VICTORIA FALLS 

conception of its peculiar shape. Niagara has been formed 
by a wearing back of the rock over which the river falls ; 
but during the long course of ages, it has gradually receded, 
and left a broad, deep, and pretty straight trough in front. 
It goes on wearing back daily, and may yet discharge the 
lakes from which its river — the St. Lawrence — flows. But 
the Victoria Falls have been formed by a crack right across the 
river, in the hard, black, basaltic rock which there formed 
the bed of the Zambesi. The lips of the crack are still 
quite sharp, save about three feet of the edge over which 
the river rolls. The walls go sheer down from the lips 
without any projecting crag, or symptoms of stratification 
or dislocation. When the mighty rift occurred, no change 
of level took place in the two parts of the bed of the river 
thus rent asunder, consequently, in coming down the river 
to Garden Island, the water suddenly disappears, and we 
see the opposite side of the cleft, with grass and trees grow- 
ing where once the river ran, on the same level as that part 
of its bed on which we sail. The first crack, is, in length, 
a few yards more than the breadth of the Zambesi, which 
by measurement we found to be a little over 1,860 yards, 
but this number we resolved to retain as indicating the year 
in which the Fall was for the first time carefully examined. 
The main stream here runs nearly north and south, and the 
cleft across it is nearly east and west. The depth of the 
rift was measured by lowering a line, to the end of which 
a few bullets and a foot of white cotton cloth were tied. 
One of us lay with his head over a projecting crag, and 
watched the descending calico, till, after his companions 



VICTORIA FALLS 1 73 

had paid out 310 feet, the weight rested on a sloping pro- 
jection, probably fifty feet from the water below, the actual 
bottom being still further down. The white cloth now 
appeared the size of a crown-piece. On measuring the 
width of this deep cleft by sextant, it was found at Garden 
Island, its narrowest part, to be eighty yards, and at its 
broadest somewhat more. Into this chasm, of twice the 
depth of Niagara-fall, the river, a full mile wide, rolls with 
a deafening roar ; and this is Mosi-oa-tunya, or the Victoria 
Falls. 

Looking from Garden Island, down to the bottom of the 
abyss, nearly half a mile of water, which has fallen over 
that portion of the Falls to our right, or west of our point 
of view, is seen collected in a narrow channel twenty or 
thirty yards wide, and flowing at exactly right angles to its 
previous course, to our left ; while the other half, or that 
which fell over the eastern portion of the Falls, is seen in 
the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our 
right. Both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling 
waterfall, and find an outlet by a crack situated at right 
angles to the fissure of the Falls. This outlet is about 
1,170 yards from the western end of the chasm, and some 
600 from its eastern end ; the whirlpool is at its com- 
mencement. The Zambesi, now apparently not more than 
twenty or thirty yards wide, rushes and surges south, 
through the narrow escape-channel for 130 yards; then 
enters a second chasm somewhat deeper, and nearly parallel 
with the first. Abandoning the bottom of the eastern 
half of this second chasm to the growth of large trees, it 



174 VICTORIA FALLS 

turns sharply off to the west, and forms a promontory, 
with the escape-channel at its point, of 1,170 yards long, 
and 416 yards broad at the base. After reaching this base, 
the river runs abruptly round the head of another promontory, 
and flows away to the east, in a third chasm; then glides 
round a third promontory, much narrower than the rest, 
and away back to the west, in a fourth chasm ; and we 
could see in the distance that it appeared to round still 
another promontory, and bend once more in another chasm 
toward the east. In this gigantic, zigzag, yet narrow 
trough, the rocks are all so sharply cut and angular, that 
the idea at once arises that the hard basaltic trap must have 
been riven into its present shape by a force acting from 
beneath, and that this probably took place when the ancient 
inland seas were cut off by similar fissures nearer the 
ocean. 

The land beyond, or on the south of the Falls, retains, 
as already remarked, the same level as before the rent was 
made. It is as if the trough below Niagara were bent right 
and left, several times before it reached the railway bridge. 
The land in the supposed bends being of the same height as 
that above the Fall, would give standing-places, or points 
of view, of the same nature as that from the railway bridge, 
but the nearest would be only eighty yards, instead of two 
miles (the distance to the bridge) from the face of the 
cascade. The tops of the promontories are in general flat, 
smooth, and studded with trees. The first, with its base on 
the east, is at one place so narrow, that it would be danger- 
ous to walk to its extremity. On the second, however, we 



VICTORIA FALLS 1 75 

found a broad rhinoceros path and a hut ; but, unless the 
builder were a hermit, with a pet rhinoceros, we cannot 
conceive what beast or man ever went there for. On 
reaching the apex of this second eastern promontory we 
saw the great river, of a deep sea-green colour, now sorely 
compressed, gliding away, at least 400 feet below us. 

Garden Island, when the river is low, commands the 
best view of the Great Fall chasm, as also of the promon- 
tory opposite, with its grove of large evergreen trees, and 
brilliant rainbows of three-quarters of a circle, two, three, 
and sometimes even four in number, resting on the face of 
the vast perpendicular rock, down which tiny streams are 
always running to be swept again back by the upward rush- 
ing vapour. But as, at Niagara, one has to go over to the 
Canadian shore to see the chief wonder — the Great Horse- 
shoe Fall — so here we have to cross over to Moselekatse's 
side to the promontory of evergreens, for the best view of 
the principal Falls of Mosi-oa-tunya. Beginning, there- 
fore, at the base of this promontory, and facing the Cata- 
ract, at the west end of the chasm, there is, first, a fall of 
thirty-six yards in breadth, and of course, as they all are, 
upwards of 310 feet in depth. Then Boaruka, a small 
island, intervenes, and next comes a great fall, with a 
breadth of 573 yards; a projecting rock separates this from 
a second grand fall of 325 yards broad ; in all, upwards of 
900 yards of perennial Falls. Further east stands Garden 
Island ; then, as the river was at its lowest, came a good 
deal of the bare rock of its bed, with a score of narrow 
falls, which, at the time of flood, constitute one enormous 



176 VICTORIA FALLS 

cascade of nearly another half-mile. Near the east end of 
the chasm are two larger falls, but they are nothing at low 
water compared to those between the islands. 

The whole body of water rolls clear over, quite un- 
broken ; but, after a descent of ten or more feet, the entire 
mass suddenly becomes a huge sheet of driven snow. 
Pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets with tails 
streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet becomes 
myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets. This pecul- 
iarity was not observed by Charles Livingstone at Niagara, 
and here it happens, possibly from the dryness of the at- 
mosphere, or whatever the cause may be which makes 
every drop of Zambesi water appear to possess a sort of in- 
dividuality. It runs off the ends of the paddles, and glides 
in beads along the smooth surface, like drops of quicksilver 
on a table. Here we see them in a conglomeration, each 
with a train of pure white vapour, racing down till lost in 
clouds of spray. A stone dropped in became less and less 
to the eye, and at last disappeared in the dense mist below. 

Charles Livingstone had seen Niagara, and gave Mosi- 
oa-tunya the palm, though now at the end of a drought, 
and the river at its very lowest. Many feel a disappoint- 
ment on first seeing the great American Falls, but Mosi-oa- 
tunya is so strange, it must ever cause wonder. In the 
amount of water, Niagara probably excels, though not 
during the months when the Zambesi is in flood. The 
vast body of water, separating in the comet-like forms de- 
scribed, necessarily encloses in its descent a large volume 
of air, which, forced into the cleft, to an unknown depth, 



VICTORIA FALLS 177 

rebounds, and rushes up loaded with vapour to form the 
three or even six columns, as if of steam, visible at the 
Batoka village Moachemba, twenty-one miles distant. On 
attaining a height of 200, or at most 300 feet from the- 
level of the river above the cascade, this vapour becomes 
condensed into a perpetual shower of fine rain. Much of 
the spray, rising to the west of Garden Island, falls on the 
grove of evergreen trees opposite; and from their leaves, 
heavy drops are for ever falling, to form sundry little rills, 
which, in running down the steep face of rock, are blown 
off and turned back, or licked off their perpendicular bed, 
up into the column from which they have just descended. 

The morning sun gilds these columns of watery smoke 
with all the glowing colours of double or treble rainbows. 
The evening sun, from a hot yellow sky imparts a sul- 
phureous hue, and gives one the impression that the yawn- 
ing gulf might resemble the mouth of the bottomless pit. 
No bird sings and sings on the branches of the grove of 
perpetual showers, or ever builds his nest there. We saw 
hornbills and flocks of little black weavers flying across 
from the mainland to the islands, and from the islands to 
the points of the promontories and back again, but they 
uniformly shunned the region of perpetual rain, occupied 
by the evergreen grove. The sunshine, elsewhere in this 
land so overpowering, never penetrates the deep gloom of 
that shade. In the presence of the strange Mosi-oa-tunya, 
we can sympathize with those who, when the world was 
young, peopled earth, air, and river, with beings not of 
mortal form. Sacred to what deity would be this awful 



178 VICTORIA FALLS 

chasm and that dark grove, over which hovers an ever- 
abiding " pillar of cloud " ? 

The ancient Batoka chieftains used Kazeruka, now 
Garden Island, and Boaruka, the island further west, also 
on the lip of the Falls, as sacred spots for worshipping the 
Deity. It is no wonder that under the cloudy columns, 
and near the brilliant rainbows, with the ceaseless roar of 
the cataract, with the perpetual flow, as if pouring forth 
from the hand of the Almighty, their souls should be filled 
with reverential awe. 

The Zambesi and its Tributaries 1858— 1864. (London, 
1865). 



THE DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA 1 

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT 

OROTAVA, the ancient Taoro of the Guanches, is 
situated on a very steep declivity. The streets 
seem deserted ; the houses are solidly built, and of gloomy 
appearance. We passed along a lofty aqueduct, lined with 
a great number of fine ferns ; and visited several gardens, 
in which the fruit trees of the north of Europe are mingled 
with orange trees, pomegranates, and date trees. We were 
assured, that these last were as little productive here as on 
the coast of Cumana. Although we had been made ac- 
quainted, from the narratives of many travellers, with the 
dragon-tree in M. Franqui's garden, we were not the less 
struck with its enormous size. We were told, that the trunk 
of this tree, which is mentioned in several very ancient docu- 
ments as marking the boundaries of a field, was as gigantic 
in the Fifteenth Century as it is in the present time. Its 
height appeared to us to be about fifty or sixty feet ; its 
circumference near the roots is forty-five feet. We could 
not measure higher, but Sir George Staunton found that, 
ten feet from the ground, the diameter of the trunk is still 
twelve English feet ; which corresponds perfectly with the 
statement of Borda, who found its mean circumference 
thirty-three feet, eight inches, French measure. The trunk 

1 This famous tree was blown down by a storm in 1868. Its age was 
estimated from five to six thousand years. — E. S. 



l8o THE DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA 

is divided into a great number of branches, which rise in 
the form of a candelabrum, and are terminated by tufts of 
leaves, like the yucca which adorns the valley of Mexico. 
This division gives it a very different appearance from that 
of the palm-tree. 

Among organic creations, this tree is undoubtedly, to- 
gether with the Adansonia or baobab of Senegal, one of 
the oldest inhabitants of our globe. The baobabs are of 
still greater dimensions than the dragon-tree of Orotava. 
There are some which near the root measure thirty-four 
feet in diameter, though their total height is only from fifty 
to sixty feet. But we should observe, that the Adansonia, 
like the ochroma, and all the plants of the family of bom- 
bax, grow much more rapidly than the dracaena, the vegeta- 
tion of which is very slow. That in M. Franqui's garden 
still bears every year both flowers and fruit. Its aspect 
forcibly exemplifies " that eternal youth of nature," which 
is an inexhaustible source of motion and of life. 

The draccena, which is seen only in cultivated spots in 
the Canary Islands, at Madeira, and Porto Santo, presents 
a curious phenomenon with respect to the emigration of 
plants. It has never been found in a wild state on the 
continent of Africa. The East Indies is its real country. 
How has this tree been transplanted to TenerifFe, where it 
is by no means common ? Does its existence prove, that, 
at some very distant period, the Guanches had connexions 
with other nations originally from Asia ? 1 

1 The form of the dragon-tree is exhibited in several species of the 
genus Dracaena, at the Cape of Good Hope, in China, and in New Zea- 




THE DRAGON TREE. 



THE DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA l8l 

The age of trees is marked by their size, and the union 
of age with the manifestation of constantly renewed vigour 
is a charm peculiar to the vegetable kingdom. The gigan- 
tic Dragon-tree of Orotava (as sacred in the eyes of the 
inhabitants of the Canaries as the olive-tree in the Citadel 
of Athens, or the Elm of Ephesus), the diameter of which 
I found, when I visited those islands, to be more than six- 
teen feet, had the same colossal size when the French ad- 
venturers, the Bethencourts, conquered these gardens of the 
Hesperides in the beginning of the Fifteenth Century; yet 
it still flourishes, as if in perpetual youth, bearing flowers and 
fruit. A tropical forest of Hymenaeas and Caesalpinieae 
may perhaps present to us a monument of more than a 
thousand years' standing. 

This coloss,al dragon-tree, Dracesna draco, stands in one 
of the most delightful spots in the world. In June, 1799, 
when we ascended the Peak of TenerifFe, we measured the 
circumference of the tree and found it nearly forty-eight 
English feet. Our measurement was taken several feet 
above the root. Lower down, and nearer to the ground, 
Le Dru made it nearly seventy-nine English feet. The 
height of the tree is not much above sixty-nine English 
feet. According to tradition, this tree was venerated by 

land. But in New Zealand it is superseded by the form of the yucca ; 
for the Dracesna borealis of Aiton is a Convallaria, of which it has all the 
appearance. The astringent juice, known in commerce by the name of 
dragon's blood, is, according to the inquiries we made on the spot, the 
produce of several American plants. At Laguna, toothpicks steeped in 
the juice of the dragon-tree are made in the nunneries, and are much ex- 
tolled as highly useful for keeping the gums in a healthy state. 



102 THE DRAGON-TREE OF OROTAVA 

the Guanches (as was the ash-tree of Ephesus by the 
Greeks, or as the Lydian plane-tree which Xerxes decked 
with ornaments, and the sacred Banyan-tree of Ceylon), 
and at the time of the first expedition of the Bethencourts 
in 1402, it was already as thick and as hollow as it now is. 
Remembering that the Dracaena grows extremely slowly, 
we are led to infer the high antiquity of the tree of Orotava. 
Bertholet in his description of Teneriffe, says : " En com- 
parant les jeunes Dragonniers, voisins de I'arbre gigantesque, 
les calcus qu' on fait sur /' age de ce dernier ejfraient /' imagina- 
tion" (Nova Acta Acad. Leop. Carol. Naturae Curi- 
osorum 1827, vol. xiii., p. 781.) The dragon-tree has 
been cultivated in the Canaries, and in Madeira and Porto 
Santo, from the earliest times ; and an accurate observer, 
Leopold von Buch, has even found it wild in Teneriffe, 
near Igueste. 

The measurement of the dragon-tree of the Villa Fran- 
qui was made on Borda's first voyage with Pingre, in 
177 1 ; not in his second voyage, in 1776, with Varela. It 
is affirmed that in the earlier times of the Norman and 
Spanish conquests, in the Fifteenth Century, Mass was 
said at a small altar erected in the hollow trunk of the tree. 
Unfortunately, the dragon-tree of Orotava lost one side of 
its top in the storm of the 21st of July, 18 19. 

Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions 
of America during the years ijgg-l8o/j. (London, 1 825); and 
Aspects of Nature (Philadelphia, 1849). 



MOUNT SHASTA 

J. W. BODDAM-WHETHAM 

MOUNT SHASTA is the most striking feature of 
Northern California. Its height is about 14,500 
feet above the sea — very nearly the height of Mount Blanc- 
Mount Blanc is broken into a succession of peaks, but 
Shasta is one stupendous peak, set upon a broad base that 
sweeps out far and wide. From the base the volcanic cone 
rises up in one vast stretch of snow and lava. It is very 
precipitous to the north and south, but east and west there 
are two slopes right up to the crater. It is a matter of 
doubt whether Shasta is dead or only sleeping. Vesuvius 
slept calmly for centuries, and then spread death and deso- 
lation for miles around. The base of the mountain is 
magnificently watered and wooded, and forms a splendid 
hunting-ground. The woods are full of deer and bears ; 
and now and then a mountain-goat, an animal very like the 
chamois of the Alps, is seen in the higher part of the 
mountains. 

Well-provided with blankets and provisions, we started 
with a guide, and a man to look after the horses, at a very 
early hour, and rode through a beautiful forest of pines, 
silver firs, and cedars. Along the banks of the streams 
were aspens, willows, and the trees known by the name of 



184 MOUNT SHASTA 

the " Balm of Gilead," whose vivid green leaves were 
already changing to a rich orange or an apple-red — forming 
a beautiful contrast of colours with the glazed green of 
the cedars and the green-tinted white of the silver firs. 

After an easy ascent to a height of about 8,000 feet, we 
reached the limits of vegetation. Thence our upward path 
lay over snow, ice, and lava — lonely, isolated barrenness on 
every side, relieved only by an occasional solitary dwarf- 
pine, struggling to retain life amidst fierce storms and 
heavy-weighing snow. Many of them were quite dead, 
but embalmed by frost and snow in a never-decaying death. 

With a few loads of this fuel we soon made a splendid 
fire, the warmth of which was most welcome in the cold 
rarefied atmosphere. Scarcely had we finished a capital 
supper ere night descended, and great clouds and fitful fogs 
began to drift past. These in their turn broke, and the 
moon threw a weird light over the forest below; whilst 
above rose piles upon piles of pinkish lava and snow-fields, 
reaching far up into the sky, whose magnificent blue grew 
more sparkling and clear every moment. 

Wrapping ourselves in our bundles of blankets, we crept 
as close as possible to the huge fire, and before long my 
companions were fast asleep and snoring. I could not 
sleep a wink, and mentally registered a vow never again to 
camp out without a pillow. No one can tell till he has 
tried it, the difference there is between going to sleep with 
a pillow under the head and a stone or a pair of boots or 
saddle as its resting-place. 

The deep silence, unbroken save by a most unromantic 



MOUNT SHASTA 1 85 

snore, was painfully oppressive, and I longed to hear even 
a growl from a bear or a deep whine from a California lion. 1 
I listened intently, for it seemed as if the slightest sound, 
even a hundred miles away, ought to be heard, so still and 
frosty was the air. 

But none fell on my ear, not even a murmur to soothe 
one to sleep, and I began to think bears and lions were 
snores and delusions, when, just as I was dozing off, I felt 
my arm violently pulled, and a voice called out that it was 
time for us to make a start. Hot coffee soon had a cheer- 
ing effect, and long before daylight we left our warm camp- 
ing-ground, and began the higher ascent on foot. Broken 
stone and slabs of lava afforded pretty good foothold, far 
preferable to the fields of frozen snow, which we carefully 
avoided. After a couple of hours' hard walking we seemed 
lo be just as far from the summit as when we started ; but 
the views gradually became grander. From a rocky promon- 
tory we looked back over a sea of glittering clouds, the only 
land visible being the peaks of the Coast range, near the 
Pacific ; all else was cloud, to which the moonlight lent an 
almost dazzling whiteness : 

" Far clouds of feathery gold, 
Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
Like islands on a dark blue sea." 

When the sun rose and the mists cleared off, the scene 
was indescribably grand, and the gradual unfolding of the 
vast panorama unapproachable in its splendour. 

1 These so-called lions are a sort of panther, and abound in most parts 
of California and Oregon. They are very cowardly, and seldom attack a 
man, unless they can spring on him from a tree, and not often then. 



1 86 MOUNT SHASTA 

After some hours of weary climbing over crumbling 
scoria and splintered rock, we reached the crater. In the 
ascent to the summit overlooking the crater, we had to 
cross an ice-field. It had that blue tinge found in the ice 
of which glaciers are composed, and its slipperiness made 
it almost impossible to walk over it, the ice lying often in 
ridges resembling the waves of the sea. 

The main crater covers several acres. It is hemmed in 
by rims of rock, and is filled with volcanic debris^ covered 
with snow and ice. Numbers of little boiling springs were 
bubbling up through the bed of sulphur, and were sugges- 
tive of the subterranean fires which once threw their molten 
lava over the surrounding country. The view from the 
summit was most extensive, and fortunately there was none 
of the usual smoke from the forest-fires, so prevalent in 
autumn in Northern California and Oregon, to impede the 
range of vision. 

Looking northward, far over into Oregon, we could see 
her lakes, valleys, and mountains. Southward, we could 
trace the Sacramento and Pitt rivers. The great boundary- 
wall of the Sierra Nevada lay to the east, and farther on- 
ward, the deserts and sparkling lakes of Utah could be 
distinguished. To the west the sinuous outline of the 
Coast range was visible, and beyond, the broad Pacific 
shelved away to the horizon. Fertile valleys, rugged 
mountains, wood and water, all lent their aid to enhance 
the beauty of this unsurpassable scene. 

The descent to our camping-ground was accomplished 
in a comparatively short time. On the way, we stopped 



MOUNT SHASTA 1 87 

to witness a most glorious sunset. Round the horizon ran 
a thin mist with a brilliant depth of colouring. To the 
east a blue gauze seemed to cover each valley as it sank 
into night, and the intervening ridges rose with increasing 
distinctness. The lower country was flooded with an ex- 
quisitely delicate light, and a few Heecy clouds tinted with 
gold, pale salmon, and sapphire, passed over the empurpled 
hills of the Coast range. The great shadow of Mount 
Shasta spread itself, cone-like, across the valley ; the blue 
mists were quenched ; the distant mountains glowed like 
fairy hills for a few moments ; and the sun, poising itself 
like a great globe of fire in the darkening heavens, de- 
scended slowly below the golden ridge to illumine another 
hemisphere. 

During our descent we passed through some patches of 
red snow, which leaves a crimson track behind those who 
cross over it. This curious phenomenon is always avoided 
by the Shasta Indians, when acting as guides or porters, 
as they say it brings death if you tread on it willingly 
and after due warning. We found a warm fire to 
welcome us on our arrival at the camp, and the ex- 
ertions of the day made us very willing to turn in 
among the blankets where we slept soundly till long after 
daybreak. The following day, when we arrived at our origi- 
nal starting-point, my companions resumed their journey to 
San Francisco, and I went on to Sissons, a station on the 
stage-road, whence I was to start on a shooting expedition 
amongst the Castle Rocks. 

Sissons, so-called after the name of the proprietor, is a 



1 88 MOUNT SHASTA 

very delightful place to spend a few days at. The view of 
Mount Shasta, which is directly opposite the house, is mag- 
nificent; and Sisson himself is a capital sportsman guide, 
and succeeds in making his guests very comfortable. 
Looking at Mount Shasta is occupation enough for some 
time. The play of colour on the mountain is extraordi- 
nary. The lava, which is of a rosy hue, often penetrates 
through the snow, and when the sun shines upon it the 
effect is most beautiful. The pure white fields of snow 
are diversified by great blue glaciers, and when the sun- 
beams fall with refracted glory on the veins of ice they ex- 
hibit wonderful tints of opal, green, and pink. The effects 
produced by the mingling colours of lava, snow, and ice, 
and the contrasting shadows of a deep violet hue are so 
varied, and the radiation of colour at sunrise and sunset so 
vivid, that it is difficult to keep the eyes turned from the 
mountain — for nothing seems worthy of consideration in 
comparison with Shasta. 

Western Wanderings : a Record of Travel in the Evening 
Land (London, 1874). 



THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 
JOHN RUSKIN 

IN the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, 
in which distance could not be vanquished without toil, 
but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power 
of deliberate survey of the countries through which the 
journey lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening 
hours, when from the top of the last hill he had sur- 
mounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he 
was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley 
stream ; or, from the long hoped for turn in the dusty 
perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the 
towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset — 
hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the 
rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not 
always, or to all men, an equivalent, — in those days, I say, 
when there was something more to be anticipated and re- 
membered in the first aspect of each successive halting- 
place, than a new. arrangement of glass roofing and iron 
girder, there were few moments of which the recollection 
was more fondly cherished by the travelled, than that 
which, as I endeavoured to describe in the close of the bst 
chapter, brought him within sight of Venice as his gondola 
shot into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not 



190 THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 

but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the 
source of some slight disappointment, for seen in this direc- 
tion, its buildings are far less characteristic than those of 
other great towns of Italy ; but this inferiority was partly 
disguised by distance, and more than atoned for by the 
strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it 
seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impossible that the mind 
or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the 
vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of 
rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow 
line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the 
moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and 
disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the 
advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed 
the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly ; 
not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan 
promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, 
but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, 
yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from 
its angry pallor into a field of burnished gold, as the sun 
declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island 
church, fitly named " St. George of the Seaweed." As the 
boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller 
had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad- 
coloured line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and wil- 
lows ; but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills 
of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, bal- 
anced on the bright mirage of the lagoon ; two or three 
smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about 



THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 191 

their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy 
peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the 
whole horizon to the north — a wall of jagged blue, here 
and there showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty 
precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and 
itself rising and breaking away eastward, where the sun 
struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of 
peaked light, standing up behind the barred clouds of even- 
ing, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian 
Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest 
upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and 
on the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, 
as the quick, silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and 
nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the 
outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through 
towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet be- 
tween two rocks of coral in the Indian sea ; when first 
upon the traveller's sight opened the long ranges of col- 
umned palaces, — each with its black boat moored at the 
portal, — each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, 
upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into 
new fantasies of rich tessellation ; when first, at the ex- 
tremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its 
colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the 
Camerlenghi ; that strange curve, so delicate, so adaman- 
tine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just 
bent ; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all 
risen, the gondolier's cry, " Ah ! Stall," struck sharp upon 
the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cor- 



192 THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 

nices that half met over the narrow canal, where the splash 
of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the 
marble by the boat's side ; and when at last that boat 
darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which 
the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine 
veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, 
it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply en- 
tranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and 
so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and 
its being. Well might it seem that such a city had owed 
her existence rather to the rod of the enchanter, than the 
fear of the fugitive j that the waters which encircled her 
had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather than the 
shelter of her nakedness ; and that all which in nature was 
wild or merciless ; — Time and Decay, as well as the waves 
and tempests, — had been won to adorn her instead of to 
destroy, and might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty 
which seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the 
hour-glass as well as of the sea. 

From the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there 
stretches, at a variable distance of from three to five miles 
from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long is- 
lands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this 
bank and the true shore consists of the sedimentary deposits 
from these and other rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, 
covered, in the neighbourhood of Venice, by the sea at high 
water, to the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a 
half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided 
by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, 



THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 1 93 

from which the sea never retires. In some places, accord- 
ing to the run of the currents, the land has risen into 
marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some by time, 
into ground firm enough to be built upon, or fruitful enough 
to be cultivated ; in others, on the contrary, it has not 
reached the sea level; so that, at the average low water, 
shallow lakelets glitter among its irregularly exposed fields 
of seaweed. In the midst of the largest of these, increased 
in importance by the confluence of several large river chan- 
nels towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city 
of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of islands ; 
the various plots of higher ground which appear to the north 
and south of this central cluster, have at different periods 
been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their 
size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and 
churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, partly 
waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for 
the supply of the metropolis. 

The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet 
(varying considerably with the season) ; but this fall, on so 
flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the 
waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which 
frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water no land 
is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, 
except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or 
gleaming with villages ; there is a channel, some three 
miles wide, between the city and the mainland, and some 
mile and a half wide between it and the sandy breakwater 
called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, 



194 THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 

but which is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of 
the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, al- 
though the secret of its true position is partly, yet not pain- 
fully, betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep 
water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains 
like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick 
glittering of the crisped and crowded waves that flicker and 
dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the 
shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. 
A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show 
ground over the greater part of the lagoon ; and at the com- 
plete ebb, the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark 
plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the 
larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams con- 
verge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and 
sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by 
tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep, 
and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow 
the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the 
clear sea water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar 
leaves the gashes upon the ground at every stroke, or is en- 
tangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with 
the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the 
uncertain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often 
profoundly oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of 
higher ground bears some fragment of fair building : but, in 
order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow in 
his boat at evening the windings of some unfrequented 
channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain ; let him 



THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 1 95 

remove in his imagination, the brightness of the great city 
that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and 
towers from the islands that are near ; and so wait, until 
the bright investiture and sweet warmth of the sunset are 
withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their 
shore lies in its nakedness beneath the night, pathless, com- 
fortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful silence, ex- 
cept where the salt rivulets plash into the tideless pools, or 
the sea-birds flit from their margins with a questioning cry; 
and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror 
of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by 
man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove 
the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for 
their rest, that their children were to be the princes of the 
ocean, and their palaces its pride ; and yet, in the great 
natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilderness, let it be re- 
membered what strange preparation had been made for the 
things which no human imagination could have foretold, 
and how the whole existence and fortune of the Venetian 
nation were anticipated or compelled, by the setting of those 
bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents 
divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have 
reduced the rising city into servitude ; had stronger surges 
beaten their shores, all the riches and refinement of the 
Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls 
and bulwarks of an ordinary seaport. Had there been no 
tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow 
canals of the city would have become noisome, and the 
marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been 



IQ6 THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 

only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water 
access to the doors of the palaces would have been impos- 
sible : even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at 
the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and 
slippery steps ; and the highest tides sometimes enter the 
courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eighteen 
inches more of difference between the level of the flood 
and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of every palace, 
at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds and limpets, and 
the entire system of water-carriage for the higher classes, in 
their easy and daily intercourse, must have been done away 
with. The streets of the city would have been widened, 
its network of canals filled up, and all the peculiar character 
of the place and the people destroyed. 

The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the con- 
trast between this faithful view of the site of the Venetian 
Throne, and the romantic conception of it which we 
ordinarily form ; but this pain, if he have felt it, ought to be 
more than counterbalanced by the value of the instance 
thus afforded to us at once of the inscrutableness and the 
wisdom of the ways of God. If, two thousand years ago, 
we had been permitted to watch the slow setting of the 
shrine of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the 
gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, 
impassable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have 
understood the purpose with which those islands were 
shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with 
their desolate walls of sand ! How little could we have 
known, any more than of what now seems to us most 



THE LAGOONS OF VENICE 1 97 

distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was 
then in the mind of Him in whose hands are all the corners 
of the earth ! how little imagined that in the laws which 
were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless 
banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their shallows, 
there was indeed a preparation, and the only preparation pos- 
sible, for the founding of a city which was to be set like a 
golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history 
on the white scrolls of the sea-surges, and to word it in 
their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in world-wide 
pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the 
burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour ! 

The Stones of Venice (Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1886). 



THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE 

AMELIA B. EDWARDS 

AT Assuan one bids good-bye to Egypt and enters 
Nubia through the gates of the Cataract — which is, 
in truth, no cataract, but a succession of rapids extending 
over two-thirds of the distance between Elephantine and 
Philae. The Nile — diverted from its original course by 
some unrecorded catastrophe, the nature of which has 
given rise to much scientific conjecture — here spreads 
itself over a rocky basin bounded by sand slopes on the one 
side, and by granite cliffs on the other. Studded with 
numerous islets, divided into numberless channels, foaming 
over sunken rocks, eddying among water-worn boulders, 
now shallow, now deep, now loitering, now hurrying, here 
sleeping in the ribbed hollow of a tiny sand-drift, there 
circling above the vortex of a hidden whirlpool, the river, 
whether looked upon from the deck of the dahabeeyah, or 
the heights above the shore, is seen everywhere to be fight- 
ing its way through a labyrinth, the paths of which have 
never yet been mapped or sounded. 

These paths are everywhere difficult and everywhere 
dangerous ; and to that labyrinth the Shellalee, or Cataract 
Arab, alone possesses the key. At the time of the 
inundation, when all but the highest rocks are under water, 



THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE 1 99 

and navigation is as easy here as elsewhere, the Shellalee's 
occupation is gone. But as the floods subside and travellers 
begin to reappear, his work commences. To haul daha- 
beeyahs up those treacherous rapids by sheer stress of rope 
and muscle ; to steer skillfully down again through channels 
bristling with rocks and boiling with foam, becomes now, 
for some five months of the year, his principal industry. It 
is hard work; but he gets well paid for it, and his profits 
are always on the increase. From forty to fifty dahabeeyahs 
are annually taken up between November and March ; and 
every year brings a larger influx of travellers. Meanwhile, 
accidents rarely happen ; prices tend continually upward ; 
and the Cataract Arabs make a little fortune by their sin- 
gular monopoly. 

The scenery of the First Cataract is like nothing else in 
the world — except the scenery of the Second. It is alto- 
gether new and strange and beautiful. It is incomprehen- 
sible that travellers should have written of it in general 
with so little admiration. They seem to have been 
impressed by the wildness of the waters, by the quaint 
forms of the rocks, by the desolation and grandeur of the 
landscape as a whole ; but scarcely at all by its beauty — 
which is paramount. 

The Nile here widens to a lake. Of the islands, which 
it would hardly be an exaggeration to describe as some 
hundreds in number, no two are alike. Some are piled up 
like the rocks at the Land's End in Cornwall, block upon 
block, column upon column, tower upon tower, as if reared 
by the hand of man. Some are green with grass ; some 



200 THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE 

golden with slopes of drifted sand ; some are planted with 
rows of blossoming lupins, purple and white. Others are 
again mere cairns of loose blocks, with here and there a 
perilously balanced top-boulder. On one, a singular up- 
right monolith, like a menhir, stands conspicuous, as if 
placed there to commemorate a date, or to point the way 
to Philae. Another mass rises out of the water squared 
and buttressed, in the likeness of a fort. A third, humped 
and shining like the wet body of some amphibious beast, 
lifts what seems to be a horned head above the surface of 
the rapids. All these blocks and boulders and fantastic 
rocks are granite ; some red, some purple, some black. 
Their forms are rounded by the friction of ages. Those 
nearest the brink reflect the sky like mirrors of burnished 
steel. Royal ovals and hieroglyphed inscriptions, fresh as 
of yesterday's cutting, stand out here and there from those 
glittering surfaces with startling distinctness. A few of the 
larger islands are crowned with clumps of palms; and one, 
the loveliest of any, is completely embowered in gum-trees 
and acacias, dom and date-palms, and feathery tamarisks, 
all festooned together under a hanging canopy of yellow- 
blossomed creepers. 

On a brilliant Sunday morning, with a favourable wind, 
we entered on this fairy archipelago. Sailing steadily 
against the current, we glided away from Assuan, left 
Elephantine behind, and found ourselves at once in the 
midst of the islands. From this moment every turn of the 
tiller disclosed a fresh point of view, and we sat on deck, 
spectators of a moving panorama. The diversity of sub- 



THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE 201 

jects was endless. The combinations of form and colour, 
of light and shadow, of foreground and distance, were con- 
tinually changing. A boat or a few figures alone were 
wanting to complete the picturesqueness of the scene, but 
in all those channels and among all those islands, we saw 
no sign of any living creature. 

The Second or Great Cataract, begins a little way above 
Wady Halfeh and extends over a distance of many miles. 
It consists, like the First Cataract, of a succession of rocks 
and rapids, and is skirted for the first five miles or so by the 
sand-clifF ridge, which, as I have said, forms a background 
to the ruins just opposite Wady Halfeh. This ridge 
terminates abruptly in the famous precipice known as the 
Rock of Abusir. Only adventurous travellers bound for 
Dongola or Khartum go beyond this point ; and they, for the 
most part, take the shorter route across the desert from 
Korosko. 

It is hard, now that we are actually here, to realize that 
this is the end of our journey. The Cataract — an immense 
multitude of black and shining islets, among which the 
river, divided into hundreds of separate channels, spreads far 
and wide for a distance, it is said of more than sixteen 
miles, — foams at our feet. Foams, and frets, and falls ; 
gushing smooth and strong where its course is free ; mur- 
muring hoarsely where it is interrupted ; now hurrying ; now 
loitering ; here eddying in oily circles ; there lying in still 
pools unbroken by a ripple ; everywhere full of life, full of 
voices ; everywhere shining to the sun. Northwards, 
when it winds away towards Abou Simbel, we see 



202 THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE 

all the fantastic mountains of yesterday on the horizon. 
To the east, still bounded by out-liers of the same discon- 
nected chain, lies a rolling waste of dark and stony wilder- 
ness, trenched with innumerable valleys through which 
flow streams of sand. On the western side, the continuity 
of the view is interrupted by the ridge which ends with 
Abusir. Southward the Libyan desert reaches away in one 
vast undulating plain ; tawny, arid, monotonous ; all sun ; 
all sand ; lit here and there with arrowy flashes of the Nile. 
Farthest of all, pale but distinct, on the outermost rim of 
the world, rise two mountain summits, one long, one dome- 
like. Our Nubians tell us that they are the mountains of 
Dongola. Comparing our position with that of the Third 
Cataract as it appears upon the map, we come to the con- 
clusion that these ghost-like silhouettes are the summits of 
Mount Fogo and Mount Arambo — two apparently parallel 
mountains situate on opposite sides of the river about ten 
miles below Hannek, and consequently about one hundred 
and forty-five miles, as the bird flies, from the spot on 
which we are standing. 

In this extraordinary panorama, so wild, so weird, so 
desolate, there is nothing really beautiful, except the colour. 
But the colour is transcendent. Never, even in Egypt, 
have I seen anything so tender, so transparent, so harmoni- 
ous. I shut my eyes, and it all comes before me. I see 
the amber of the sands ; the pink and pearly mountains ; 
the Cataract rocks all black and purple and polished ; the 
dull grey palms that cluster here and there upon the larger 
islands ; the vivid verdure of the tamarisks and pomegran- 



THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE 203 

ates ; the Nile, a greenish brown flecked with yeasty foam ; 
over all, the blue and burning sky, permeated with light, and 
palpitating with sunshine. 

I made no sketch. I felt that it would be ludicrous to at- 
tempt it. And I feel now that any endeavour to put the 
scene into words is a mere presumptuous effort to describe 
the indescribable. Words are useful instruments ; but, like 
the etching needle and the burin, they stop short at form. 
They cannot translate colour. 

If a traveller pressed for time asked me whether he 
should or should not go as far as the Second Cataract, I 
think I should recommend him to turn back from Abou 
Simbel. The trip must cost four days ; and if the wind 
should happen to be unfavourable either way, it may cost 
six or seven. The forty miles of river that have to be 
twice traversed are the dullest on the Nile ; the Cataract is 
but an enlarged and barren edition of the Cataract between 
Assuan and Philae ; and the great view, as I have said, has 
not that kind of beauty which attracts the general tourist. 

It has an interest, however, beyond and apart from that 
of beauty. It rouses one's imagination to a sense of the 
greatness of the Nile. We look across a world of desert, 
and see the river still coming from afar. We have reached 
a point at which all that is habitable and familiar comes 
abruptly to an end. Not a village, not a bean-field, not a 
shaduf, not a sakkieh, is to be seen in the plain below. There 
is no sail on these dangerous waters. There is no moving 
creature on these pathless sands. But for the telegraphic 
wires stalking ghost-like, across the desert, it would seem 



204 THE CATARACTS OF THE NILE 

as if we had touched the limit of civilization, and were 
standing on the threshold of a land unexplored. 

Yet for all this, we feel as if we were at only the begin- 
ning of the mighty river. We have journeyed well-nigh a 
thousand miles against the stream ; but what is that to the 
distance which still lies between us and the Great Lakes ? 
And how far beyond the Great Lakes must we seek for 
the source that is even yet undiscovered ? 

A Thousand Miles Up the Nile (London, 1890). 



IN THE ALPS 

THEOPHILE GAUTIER 

THE foot of the high mountains that form the chain 
of Mount Blanc, clothed with forests and pastures, 
revealed hues of delightful intensity and vigour. Imagine an 
immense piece of green velvet crumpled into large folds 
like the curtain of a theatre with the deep black of its hollows 
and the golden glitterings of its lights ; this is a very faint 
image for the grandeur of the object, but I know of none 
that could better describe the effect. 

Scheele's green, mineral green, all those greens that re- 
sult from the combinations of Prussian blue and yellow 
ochre, or Naples yellow, the mixture of indigo and Indian 
yellow, Veronese green and vert prasin could not reproduce 
that quality of green that we might properly call mountain 
green and which passes from velvety black into the tender- 
est shades of green. In this play of shades, the firs form 
the shadows ; the deciduous trees and the spaces of meadow 
or moss, the lights. The undulations and the cleft ravines 
of the mountain break these great masses of green, this vig- 
orous foreground, this energetic repoussoir, rendering the 
light tones of the zones, (bare of verdue and crowned by 
the high lights of the snows,) more vaporous and throwing 
them back. In the various more open places, the grass grows 



206 IN THE ALPS 

green in the sun ; and trees resembling little black patches 
sown upon this light ground give it the appearance of tufted 
material. But when we speak of trees and firs, woods and 
forests, do not picture to yourselves anything but vast blots 
of dark moss upon the slopes of the mountains : the high- 
est trunks there assume the proportion of a blade of grass. 
The road turns towards the left, and, gliding between 
stones and blocks that have fallen down or drifted into the 
valley by means of the winter torrents and avalanches, soon 
enters a forest of birch-trees, firs, and larches whose open- 
ings allow you to see on the other side the Jiguilles Rouges 
and le Brevent, which face Montanvert. The ascent was 
gentle enough and the mules climbed it with easy gait ; in 
comparison with the road which we scaled the night be- 
fore to go to the Pierre pointue, the route was a true alley 
of the Bois de Boulogne. The zigzags of the road 
turned at angles sufficiently long not to fatigue either the 
rider or his mount. The sunlight played in the foliage of 
the forest that we traversed and made a shadow shot 
through with rays float over us. Upon the rocks at the 
foot of the trees, mosses of emerald green gleamed and 
lovely little wild flowers brightly bloomed, while in the 
spaces through the branches a bluish mist betrayed the depth 
of the abyss, for the little caravan, going along single file 
and constantly ascending, had now reached the Caillet 
fountain, which is regarded as half-way up the mountain. 
This fountain, of excellent water, runs into a wooden 
trough. The mules halt there to drink. A cabin is built 
near the fountain and they offer you a glass of water made 



ipw* & 1 







IN THE ALPS 207 

opalescent with a few drops of kirsch, cognac, beer, and 
other refreshments. We regaled our guides with a glass of 
brandy, which, notwithstanding their sobriety, they seemed 
to prefer to that diamond liquid that sprang from the 
rock. 

From this point, the road began to grow steeper; the 
ascents multiplied without, however, offering any difficulties 
to mules or pedestrians. The air became more keen. 
The forest grew lighter, the trees stood at greater intervals 
from each other and stopped as if out of breath. They 
seemed to say to us, " Now, go up alone, we cannot go 
any further." The rounded plateau that we mount by 
keeping to the right is not desolate and denuded as one 
would believe ; a grass, sturdy enough and enamelled with 
Alpine flowers, forms its carpet, and when you have gone 
beyond it, you perceive the chalet or inn of Montanvert 
below the Aiguille de Cbarmoz. 

From this plateau you have a superb view, an astonish- 
ing, apocalyptic view, beyond all dreams. At your feet, 
between two banks of gigantic peaks, flows motionless, as 
if congealed during the tumult of a tempest, that broad 
river of crystal which is called the Mer de Glace, and 
which lower towards the plain is called the Glacier des 
Bois. The Mer de Glace comes from a high altitude ; it 
receives many glaciers as a river its tributaries. We will 
speak of it presently, but for the moment let us occupy 
ourselves with the spectacle that unfolds beneath our eyes. 

Opposite the inn of Montanvert, the glacier is half a 
league from one bank to the other, perhaps even more, for 



208 IN THE ALPS 

it is difficult to guage distance in the mountains with ex- 
actness ; it is about the width of the Thames, the Neva or 
the Guadalquiver towards their mouth. But the slope is 
much more abrupt than was ever that of any river. It de- 
scends by large waves rounded at their tops, like billows 
that never break into foam and whose hollows take a bluish 
colour. When the ground that serves as a bed for this 
torrent of ice becomes too abrupt, the mass is dislocated 
and breaks up into slabs that rest one upon the other and 
which resemble those little columns of white marble in the 
Turkish cemeteries that are forced to lean to right or left 
by their own weight ; crevasses more or less wide and deep 
manifest themselves, opening the immense block and re- 
vealing the virgin ice in all its purity. The walls of these 
crevasses assume magical colours, tints of an azure grotto. 
An ideal blue that is neither the blue of the sky nor the 
blue of the water, but the blue of ice, an unnamed tone 
that is never found on the artist's palette illumines these 
splendid clefts and turns sometimes to a green of aqua ma- 
rine or mother of pearl by gradations of astonishing del- 
icacy. On the other bank, clearly detached by its 
sharp escarpment like the spire of a gigantic cathedral, the 
high Aiguille du Dru rises with so proud, so elegant, and so 
bold a spring. Ascending the glacier, the Aiguille Verte 
stands out in front of it, being even higher though the per- 
spective makes it appear lower. From the foot of the Aiguille 
du Dru, like a rivulet towards a river, descends the Mont 
Blanc glacier. A little further to the right, the Aiguille du 
Moine and that of L'echaud show themselves, obelisks of 



IN THE ALPS 209 

granite which the sunlight tints with reflections of rose and 
the snow makes gleam with several touches of silver. It 
is difficult to express in words the unexpected outlines, the 
strange flashes, the tops cut and indented in the form of 
saw-teeth, gable-ends and crosses that are affected by these 
inaccessible peaks with almost vertical walls, — often even 
sloping outwards and overhanging. Running your eye along 
the same bank of the glacier and descending towards the 
valley, you see the Aiguille du Bochard y le Chapeau, which 
is nothing more or less than a rounded mountain, grassy 
and enamelled with flowers, not so high as Montanvert, 
and the forests which have given to this portion of the Mer 
de Glace the name of Glacier des Bois, bordering it with a 
line of sombre verdure. 

There are in the Mer de Glace two veins that divide it 
throughout its length like the currents of two rivers that 
never mingle : a black vein and a white vein. The black 
one flows by the side of the bank where the Aiguille du Dru 
rears itself, and the white one bathes the foot of Mon- 
tanvert ; but words when we speak of colour only half de- 
scribe shades, and it must not be imagined that this de- 
marcation is as clearly defined as we have indicated. It is, 
however, very sensible. 

On looking towards the upper portion of the glacier, at 
the spot where it precipitates itself into the rock passage 
which conducts it to the valley like a furiously boiling cas- 
cade with wild spurts which some magic power has turned 
into ice at its strongest leap, you discover, arranged like an 
amphitheatre, the Montagne des Periades, the Petites Jorasses, 



210 IN THE ALPS 

the Grandes Jorasses, and the Aiguille du G'eant, covered 
with eternal snow, the white diadem of the Alps which the 
suns of summer are powerless to melt and which scintillate 
with a pure and cold brilliancy in the clear blue of the sky. 

At the foot of the Periades, the glacier, as may be seen 
from Montanvert, divides into two branches, one of which 
ascends towards the east and takes the name of the Glacier 
de L'echaud, while the other takes its course behind the 
Aiguilles de Cbamouni towards Mont Blanc du Tacul, and is 
called the Glacier du G'eant. A third branch, named the 
Glacier du Talifre, spreads out over the slopes of the 
Aiguille Verte. 

It is in the middle of the Talifre where lies that oasis of 
the glaciers that is called the "Jardin, a kind of basket of 
Alpine flowers, which find there a pinch of vegetable earth, 
a few rays of sunshine, and a girdle of stones that isolate 
them from the neighbouring ice ; but to climb to the 'Jar- 
din is a long, fatiguing and even dangerous excursion, neces- 
sitating a night's sleep at the chalet of Montanvert. 

We resumed our journey not without having gathered sev- 
eral bunches of rhododendrons of the freshest green and 
brightest rose, that opened in the liberty and solitude of the 
mountains by means of the pure Alpine breeze. You de- 
scend by the same route more rapidly than you ascended. 

The mules stepped gaily by the side of their leaders, who 
carried the sticks, canes and umbrellas, which had now be- 
come useless. We traversed the forest of pines pierced 
here and there by the torrents of stones of the avalanches ; 
we gained the plain and were soon at Chamouni to go to 



IN THE ALPS 211 

the source of the Arveiron, which is found at the base of 
the Glacier des Bois^ the name that is assumed by the Mer 
de Glace on arriving in the valley. 

This is an excursion that you can make in a carriage. 
You follow the bottom of the valley, cross the Arve at the 
hamlet of Praz, and after having passed the Hameau des 
Bois, where you must alight, you arrive, winding among 
masses of rocks in disorder and pools of water across which 
logs are placed, at the wall of the glacier, which reveals it- 
self by its slit and tortured edges, full of cavities and gashes 
where the blue-green hatchings colour the transparent 
whiteness of the mass. 

The white teeth of the glacier stand out clearly against 
the sombre green of the forests of Bochard and Montanvert 
and are majestically dominated by the Aiguille du Dru, 
which shoots its granite obelisk three thousand nine hundred 
and six metres into the depths of the sky, and the foreground 
is formed by the most prodigious confusion of stones, rocks 
and blocks that a painter could wish for giving value to 
those vapourous depths. The Arveiron foams and roars 
across this chaos and, after half an hour of frantic disordered 
course, loses itself in the Arve. 

Les Vacances de Lundi (Paris, 1881). 



THE VALE OF KASHMIR 

ANDREW WILSON 

ALMOST every one longs, and many hope, to see 
the beautiful Vale of Kashmir. Probably no re- 
gion of the earth is so well known to the eye of imagina- 
tion, or so readily suggests the idea of a terrestrial Paradise. 
So far from having been disappointed with the reality, or 
having experienced any cause for wishing that I had left 
Kashmir unvisited, I can most sincerely say that the beau- 
tiful reality excels the somewhat vague poetic vision which 
has been associated with the name. But Kashmir is rather 
a difficult country to get at, especially when you come down 
upon it from behind by way of Zanskar and Sum. Ac- 
cording to tradition, it was formerly the Garden of Eden ; 
and one is very well disposed to accept that theory when 
trying to get into it from the north or northwest. 

After months of the sterile, almost treeless Tibetan prov- 
inces, the contrast was very striking,, and I could not but 
revel in the beauty and glory of the vegetation ; but even 
to one who had come up upon it from below, the scene 
would have been very striking. There was a large and 
lively encampment at the foot of the pass, with tents pre- 
pared for the Yarkand envoy, and a number of Kashmir 
officers and soldiers j but I pushed on beyond that, and 



THE VALE OF KASHMIR 21 3 

camped in solitude close to the Sind river, just beneath the 
Panjtarne valley, which leads up towards the caves of Am- 
bernath, a celebrated place for Hindu pilgrimage. This 
place is called Baltal, but it has no human habitations. 
Smooth green meadows, carpet-like and embroidered with 
flowers, extended to the silvery stream, above which there 
was the most varied luxuriance of foliage, the lower moun- 
tains being most richly clothed with woods of many and 
beautiful colours. It was late autumn, and the trees were 
in their greatest variety of colour ; but hardly a leaf seemed 
to have fallen. The dark green of the pines contrasted 
beautifully with the delicate orange of the birches, because 
there were intermingling tints of brown and saffron. Great 
masses of foliage were succeeded by solitary pines, which 
had found a footing high up the precipitous crags. 

And all this was combined with peaks and slopes of pure 
white snow. Aiguilles of dark rock rose out of beds of 
snow, but their faces were powdered with the same ele- 
ment. Glaciers and long beds of snow ran down the val- 
leys, and the upper vegetation had snow for its bed. The 
effect of sunset upon this scene was wonderful ; for the 
colours it displayed were both heightened and more harmo- 
niously blended. The golden light of eve brought out the 
warm tints of the forest ; but the glow of the reddish-brown 
precipices, and the rosy light upon the snowy slopes and 
peaks, were too soon succeeded by the cold grey of evening. 
At first, however, the wondrous scene was still visible in a 
quarter-moon's silvery light, in which the Panjtarne valley 
was in truth — 



214 THE VALE OF KASHMIR 

" A wild romantic chasm that slanted 

Down the sweet hill athwart a cedarn cover — 
A savage place, as holy and enchanted 
As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted 
By woman wailing for her demon lover." 

The demon lovers to be met with in that wild valley are 
bears, which are in abundance, and a more delightful place 
for a hunter to spend a month in could hardly be invented ; 
but he would have to depend on his rifle for supplies, or 
have them sent up from many miles down the Sind valley. 

The remainder of my journey down the latter valley to 
the great valley or small plain of Kashmir was delightful. 
A good deal of rain fell, but that made one appreciate the 
great trees all the more, for the rain was not continuous, 
and was mingled with sunshine. At times, during the 
season when I saw it, this " inland depth " is " roaring 
like the sea ; " 

" While trees, dim-seen in frenzied numbers tear 
The lingering remnant of their yellow hair ; " 

but soon after it is bathed in perfect peace and mellow sun- 
light. The air was soft and balmy ; but, at this transfer 
from September to October, it was agreeably cool even to 
a traveller from the abodes and sources of snow. As we 
descended, the pine-forests were confined to the mountain- 
slopes ; but the lofty deodar began to appear in the valley, 
as afterwards the sycamore, the elm, and the horse-chest- 
nut. Round the picturesque villages, and even forming 
considerable woods, there were fruit-trees — as the walnut, 
the chestnut, the peach, the apricot, the apple, and the 



THE VALE OF KASHMIR 215 

pear. Large quantities of timber (said to be cut recklessly) 
was in course of being floated down the river; and where 
the path led across it there were curious wooden bridges for 
which it was not necessary to dismount. This Sind valley 
is about sixty miles long, and varies in breadth from a few 
hundred yards to about a mile, except at its base, where it 
opens out considerably. It is considered to afford the best 
idea of the mingled beauty and grandeur of Kashmir 
scenery ; and when I passed through its appearance was 
greatly enhanced by the snow, which not only covered the 
mountain-tops, but also came down into the forests which 
clothed the mountain-sides. The path through it, being 
part of the great road from Kashmir to Central Asia, is 
kept in tolerable repair, and it is very rarely that the rider 
requires to dismount. Anything beyond a walking-pace, 
however, is for the most part out of the question. Mont- 
gomerie divides the journey from Srinagar to Baltal (where 
I camped below the Zoji La) into six marches, making in 
all sixty-seven miles; and though two of these marches 
may be done in one day, yet if you are to travel easily and 
enjoy the scenery, one a day is sufficient. The easiest 
double march is from Sonamarg to Gond, and I did it in a 
day with apparent ease on a very poor pony ; but the con- 
sequence is that I beat my brains in order to recall what 
sort of a place Gond was, no distinct recollection of it 
having been left on my mind, except of a grove of large 
trees and a roaring fire in front of my tent at night. 
Sonamarg struck me as a very pleasant place; and I had 
there, in the person of a youthful captain from Abbotabad, 



2l6 THE VALE OF KASHMIR 

the pleasure of meeting the first European I had seen since 
leaving Lahaul. We dined together, and I found he had 
come up from Srinagar to see Sonamarg, and he spoke with 
great enthusiasm of a view he had had, from another part 
of Kashmir, of the 26,000 feet mountain Nanga Parbat. 
Marg means " meadow," and seems to be applied especially 
to elevated meadows ; sona stands for "golden" : and this 
place is a favourite resort in the hot malarious months of 
July and August, both for Europeans in Kashmir and for 
natives of rank. 

At Ganderbahl I was fairly in the great valley of 
Kashmir, and encamped under some enormous chunar or 
sycamore trees ; the girth of one was so great that its trunk 
kept my little mountain-tent quite sheltered from the furious 
blasts. Truly — 

" There was a roaring in the wind all night, 
The rain fell heavily, and fell in floods, 

but that gigantic chunar kept off both wind and rain won- 
derfully. Next day a small but convenient and quaint 
Kashmir boat took me up to Srinagar; and it was delight- 
ful to glide up the backwaters of the Jhelam, which af- 
forded a highway to the capital. It was the commence- 
ment and the promise of repose, which I very sadly 
needed, and in a beautiful land. 

I afterwards went up to Islamabad, Martand, Achibal, 
Vernag, the Rozlu valley, and finally went out of Kash- 
mir by way of the Manas and Wular Lakes, and the 
lower valley of the Jhelam, so that I saw the most 



THE VALE OF KASHMIR 217 

interesting places in the country, and all the varieties 
of scenery which it affords. That country has been so 
often visited and described, that, with one or two ex- 
ceptions, I shall only touch generally upon its charac- 
teristics. It doubtless owes some of its charm to the 
character of the regions in its neighbourhood. As com- 
pared with the burning plains of India, the sterile steppes 
of Tibet, and the savage mountains of the Himalaya and 
of Afghanistan, it presents an astonishing and beautiful 
contrast. After such scenes even a much more common- 
place country might have afforded a good deal of the en- 
thusiasm which Kashmir has excited in Eastern poetry, and 
even in common rumour; but beyond that it has char- 
acteristics which give it a distinct place among the most 
pleasing regions of the earth. I said to the Maharajah, or 
ruling Prince of Kashmir, that the most beautiful countries 
I had seen were England, Italy, Japan, and Kashmir ; and 
though he did not seem to like the remark much, probably 
from a fear that the beauty of the land he governed 
might make it too much an object of desire, yet there was 
no exaggeration in it. Here, at a height of nearly 6,000 
feet, in a temperate climate, with abundance of moisture, 
and yet protected by lofty mountains from the fierce con- 
tinuous rains of the Indian southwest monsoon, we have 
the most splendid amphitheatre in the world. A flat oval 
valley about sixty miles long, and from forty in breadth, is 
surrounded by magnificent mountains, which, during the 
greater part of the year, are covered more than half-way 
down with snow, and present vast upland beds of pure 



2l8 THE VALE OF KASHMIR 

white snow. This valley has fine lakes, is intersected 
with water-courses, and its land is covered with brilliant 
vegetation, including gigantic trees of the richest foliage. 
And out of this great central valley there rise innumerable, 
long, picturesque mountain-valleys, such as that of the 
Sind river, which I have just described ; while above these 
there are great pine-forests, green slopes of grass, glaciers, 
and snow. Nothing could express the general effect better 
than Moore's famous lines on sainted Lebanon — 

" Whose head in wintry grandeur towers, 
And whitens with eternal sleet ; 
While Summer, in a vale of flowers, 
Is sleeping rosy at his feet." 

The great encircling walls of rock and snow contrast 
grandly with the soft beauty of the scene beneath. The 
snows have a wonderful effect as we look up to them 
through the leafy branches of the immense chiinar, elm, and 
poplar trees. They flash gloriously in the morning sun- 
light above the pink mist of the valley-plain ; they have a 
rosy glow in the evening sunlight; and when the sunlight 
has departed, but ere darkness shrouds them, they gleam, 
afar off, with a cold and spectral light, as if they belonged 
to a region where man had never trod. The deep black 
gorges in the mountains have a mysterious look. The sun 
lights up some softer grassy ravine or green slope, and then 
displays splintered rocks rising in the wildest confusion. 
Often long lines of white clouds lie along the line of 
mountain-summits, while at other times every white peak 
and precipice-wall is distinctly marked against the deep- 



THE VALE OF KASHMIR 2IO. 

blue sky. The valley-plain is especially striking in clear 
mornings and evenings, where it lies partly in golden sun- 
light, partly in the shadow of its great hills. 

The green mosaic of the level land is intersected by many 
streams, canals or lakes, or beautiful reaches of river which 
look like small lakes. The lakes have floating islands com- 
posed of vegetation. Besides the immense chunars and 
elms, and the long lines of stately poplars, great part of the 
plain is a garden filled with fruits and flowers, and there is 
almost constant verdure. 

" There eternal summer dwells, 
And west winds, with musky wing, 
About the cedar'd alleys fling 
Nard and cassia's balmy smells." 

Travel, Adventure and Sport from Blackwood's Magazine 
(Edinburgh and London), Vol. vi. 



THE LAKE OF PITCH 

CHARLES KINGSLEY 

THIS Pitch Lake should be counted among the won- 
ders of the world ; for it is, certainly, tolerably big. 
It covers ninety-nine acres, and contains millions of tons 
of so-called pitch. 

Its first discoverers were not bound to see that a pitch 
lake of ninety-nine acres was no more wonderful than any 
of the little pitch wells — " spues " or "galls," as we should 
call them in Hampshire — a yard across ; or any one of the 
tiny veins and lumps of pitch which abound in the sur- 
rounding forests ; and no less wonderful than if it had covered 
ninety-nine thousand acres instead of ninety-nine. 

As we neared the shore, we perceived that the beach was 
black with pitch ; and the breeze being off the land, the 
asphalt smell (not unpleasant) came off to welcome us. 
We rowed in, and saw in front of a little row of wooden 
houses, a tall mulatto, in blue policeman's dress, gesticulat- 
ing and shouting to us. He was the ward policeman, and 
I found him (as I did all the coloured police) able and 
courteous, shrewd and trusty. These police are excellent 
specimens of what can be made of the Negro, or Half- 
Negro, if he be but first drilled, and then given a responsi- 
bility which calls out his self-respect. He was warning our 



THE LAKE OF PITCH 221 

crew not to run aground on one or other of the pitch reefs, 
which here take the place of rocks. A large one, a 
hundred yards off on the left, has been almost all dug 
away, and carried to New York or to Paris to make asphalt 
pavement. 

The boat was run ashore, under his directions, on a spit 
of sand between the pitch ; and when she ceased bumping 
up and down in the muddy surf, we scrambled out into a 
world exactly the hue of its inhabitants — of every shade, 
from jet-black to copper-brown. The pebbles on the shore 
were pitch. A tide-pool close by was enclosed in pitch : a 
four-eyes was swimming about in it, staring up at us ; and 
when we hunted him, tried to escape, not by diving, but by 
jumping on shore on the pitch, and scrambling off between 
our legs. While the policeman, after profoundest courte- 
sies, was gone to get a mule-cart to take us up to the lake, 
and planks to bridge its water-channels, we took a look 
round at this oddest of the corners of the earth. 

In front of us was the unit of civilization — the police- 
station, wooden on wooden stilts (as all well-built houses 
are here), to ensure a draught of air beneath them. We 
were, of course, asked to come and sit down, but preferred 
looking around, under our umbrellas ; for the heat was in- 
tense. The soil is half pitch, half brown earth, among 
which the pitch sweals in and out, as tallow sweals from a 
candle. It is always in slow motion under the heat of the 
tropic sun : and no wonder if some of the cottages have 
sunk right and left in such a treacherous foundation. A 
stone or brick house could not stand here : but wood and 



222 THE LAKE OF PITCH 

palm-thatch are both light and tough enough to be safe, let 
the ground give way as it will. 

The soil, however, is very rich. The pitch certainly 
does not injure vegetation, though plants will not grow ac- 
tually in it. The first plants which caught our eyes were 
pine-apples ; for which La Brea is famous. The heat of the 
soil, as well as of the air, brings them to special perfection. 
They grow about anywhere, unprotected by hedge or fence ; 
for the Negroes here seem honest enough, at least towards 
each other. And at the corner of the house was a bush 
worth looking at, for we had heard of it for many a year. 
It bore prickly, heart-shaped pods an inch long, filled with 
seeds coated with a rich waxy pulp. 

This was a famous plant — Bixa, Orellana, Roucou; and 
that pulp was the well-known Arnotta dye of commerce. 
In England and Holland, it is used merely, I believe, to 
colour cheeses ; but in the Spanish Main, to colour human 
beings. As we went onward up the gentle slope (the rise 
is one hundred and thirty-eight feet in rather more than a 
mile), the ground became more and more full of pitch, and 
the vegetation poorer and more rushy, till it resembled on 
the whole, that of an English fen. An Ipomcea or two, and 
a scarlet-flowered dwarf Heliconia kept up the tropic type 
as does a stifF brittle fern about two feet high. 

The plateau of pitch now widened out, and the whole 
ground looked like an asphalt pavement, half overgrown 
with marsh-loving weeds, whose roots feed in the sloppy 
water which overlies the pitch. But, as yet, there was no 
sign of the lake. The incline, though gentle, shuts off the 



THE LAKE OF PITCH 223 

view of what is beyond. This last lip of the lake has 
surely overflowed, and is overflowing still, though very 
slowly. Its furrows all curve downward; and, it is, in 
fact, as one of our party said, " a black glacier." The 
pitch, expanding under the burning sun of day, must needs 
expand most towards the line of least resistance, that is, 
down hill ; and when it contracts again under the coolness 
of night, it contracts surely from the same cause, more 
downhill than it does uphill; so that each particle never re- 
turns to the spot whence it started, but rather drags the 
particles above it downward towards itself. At least, so it 
seemed to us. 

At last we surmounted the last rise, and before us lay the 
famous lake — not at the bottom of a depression, as we ex- 
pected, but at the top of a rise, whence the ground slopes 
away from it on two sides, and rises from it very slightly on 
the two others. The black pool glared and glittered in the 
sun. A group of islands, some twenty yards wide, were 
scattered about the middle of it. Beyond it rose a noble 
forest of Moriche fan-palms ; and to the right of them high 
wood with giant Mombins and undergrowth of Cocorite — 
a paradise on the other side of the Stygian pool. 

We walked, with some misgivings, on to the asphalt, 
and found it perfectly hard. In a few yards we were 
stopped by a channel of clear water, with tiny fish and 
water-beetles in it ; and, looking round, saw that the whole 
lake was intersected with channels, so unlike anything 
which can be seen elsewhere, that it is not easy to describe 
them. 



224 THE LAKE OF PITCH 

Conceive a crowd of mushrooms, of all shapes from ten 
to fifty feet across, close together side by side, their tops 
being kept at exactly the same level, their rounded rims 
squeezed tight against each other ; then conceive water 
poured on them so as to fill the parting seams, and in the 
wet season, during which we visited it, to overflow the 
tops somewhat. Thus would each mushroom represent, 
tolerably well, one of the innumerable flat asphalt bosses, 
which seem to have sprung up each from a separate centre. 

In five minutes we had seen, handled, and smelt enough 
to satisfy us with this very odd and very nasty vagary of 
tropic nature ; and as we did not wish to become faint or 
ill, between the sulphuretted hydrogen and the blaze of the 
sun reflected off" the hot black pitch, we hurried on over the 
water-furrows, and through the sedge-beds to the further 
shore — to find ourselves in a single step out of an Inferno 
into a Paradise. 

We looked back at the foul place, and agreed that it is 
well for the human mind that the Pitch Lake was still un- 
known when Dante wrote that hideous poem of his — the 
opprobrium (as I hold) of the Middle Age. For if such 
were the dreams of its noblest and purest genius, what must 
have been the dreams of the ignoble and impure multitude ? 
But had he seen this lake, how easy, how tempting too, it 
would have been to him to embody in imagery the surmise 
of a certain " Father," and heighten the torments of the 
lost being, sinking slowly into that black Bolge beneath the 
baking rays of the tropic sun, by the sight of the saved, 
walking where we walked, beneath cool fragrant shade, 



THE LAKE OF PITCH 225 

among the pillars of a temple to which the Parthenon is 
mean and small. 

Sixty feet and more aloft, the short, smooth columns of 
the Moriches towered around us, till, as we looked through 
the " pillared shade," the eye was lost in the green abysses 
of the forest. Overhead, their great fan-leaves form a 
grooved roof, compared with which that of St. Mary Rad- 
clifF, or even of King's College, is as clumsy as all man's 
works are beside the works of God ; and beyond the 
Moriche wood, ostrich plumes packed close round madder- 
brown stems, formed a wall to our temple, which bore such 
tracery, carving, and painting, as would have stricken dumb 
with awe and delight him who ornamented the Loggie of 
the Vatican. 

What might not have been made, with something of 
justice and mercy, common sense and humanity, of these 
gentle Arawaks and Guaraons. What was made of them, 
almost ere Columbus was dead, may be judged from this 
one story, taken from Las Casas. 

" There was a certain man named Juan Bono, who was 
employed by the members of the Andencia of St. Domingo 
to go and obtain Indians. He and his men to the number 
of fifty or sixty, landed on the Island of Trinidad. Now 
the Indians of Trinidad were a mild, loving, credulous race, 
the enemies of the Caribs, who ate human flesh. On Juan 
Bono's landing, the Indians armed with bows and arrows, 
went to meet the Spaniards, and to ask them who they were, 
and what they wanted. Juan Bono replied that his men 
were good and peaceful people, who had come to live with 



226 THE LAKE OF PITCH 

the Indians ; upon which, as the commencement of good 
fellowship, the natives offered to build houses for the 
Spaniards. The Spanish captain expressed a wish to have 
one large house built. The accommodating Indians set 
about building it. It was to be in the form of a bell and to 
be large enough for a hundred persons to live in. On any 
great occasion it would hold many more. . . . Upon 
a certain day Juan Bono collected the Indians together — 
men, women, and children — in the building l to see,' as he 
told them, ' what was to be done.' ... A horrible 
massacre ensued. . . ." 

Such was the fate of the poor gentle folk who for un- 
known ages had swung their hammocks to the stems of 
these Moriches, spinning the skin of the young leaves into 
twine, and making sago from the pith, and then wine from 
the sap and fruit, while they warned their children not to 
touch the nests of the humming-birds, which even till lately 
swarmed around the lake. For — so the Indian story ran — 
once on a time a tribe of Chaymas built their palm-leaf 
ajoupas upon the very spot, where the lake now lies, and 
lived a merry life. The sea swarmed with shell-fish and 
turtle, and the land with pine-apples ; the springs were 
haunted by countless flocks of flamingoes and horned 
screamers, pajuis and blue ramiers ; and, above all, by 
humming-birds. But the foolish Chaymas were blind to 
the mystery and beauty of the humming-birds, and would 
not understand how they were no other than the souls of 
dead Indians, translated into living jewels ; and so they 
killed them in wantonness, and angered " The Good 



THE LAKE OF PITCH 227 

Spirit." But one morning, when the Guaraons came by, 
the Chayma village had sunk deep into the earth, and in its 
place had risen this Lake of Pitch. So runs the tale, told 
forty years since to Mr. Joseph, author of a clever little 
history of Trinidad, by an old half-caste Indian, Senor 
Trinidada by name, who was said then to be nigh one hun- 
dred years of age. Surely the people among whom such a 
myth could spring up, were worthy of a nobler fate. 
At Last (London and New York, 1871). 



THE LACHINE RAPIDS 

DOUGLAS SLADEN 

ROM St. Anne's to Lachine is not such a very far 
cry, and it was at Lachine that the great La Salle 
had his first seigniory. This Norman founder of Illinois, 
who reared on the precipices of Fort St. Louis the white 
flag and his great white cross nearly a couple of centuries 
before the beginnings of the Metropolis of the West, made 
his beginnings at his little seigniory round Fort Remy, on 
the Island of Montreal. 

The son of a wealthy and powerful burgher of Rouen, he 
had been brought up to become a Jesuit. La Salle was 
well fitted for an ecclesiastic, a prince of the Church, a 
Richelieu, but not for a Jesuit, whose effacement of self is 
the keystone of the order. To be one step, one stone in 
the mighty pyramid of the Order of Jesus was not for him, 
a man of mighty individuality like Columbus or Cromwell, 
and accordingly his piety, asceticism, vast ambition, and 
superhuman courage were lost to the Church and gained to 
the State. So says Parkman. 

His seigniory and fort — probably the Fort Remy of 
which a contemporary plan has come down to us — were 
just where the St. Lawrence begins to widen into Lake St. 
Louis, abreast of the famous Rapids of Lachine, shot by so 



THE LACHINE RAPIDS 229 

many tourists with blanched cheeks every summer. I say 
tourists, for, as I have said before, there is nothing your 
true Canadian loves so much as the off-chance of being 
drowned in a cataract or " splifficated " on a toboggan slide. 
It is part of the national education, like the Bora Bora, or 
teeth-drawing, of the Australian aborigines. The very 
name Lachine breathes a memory of La Salle, for it was so 
christened in scorn by his detractors — the way by which La 
Salle thinks he is going to get to China. A palisade con- 
taining, at any rate, the house of La Salle, a stone mill still 
standing, and a stone barrack and ammunition house, now 
falling into most picturesque and pitfallish decay — such is 
Fort Remy, founded nearly two centuries and a quarter 
ago, when England was just beginning to feel the invigorat- 
ing effects of a return to the blessings of Stuart rule. This 
was in 1667, but La Salle was not destined to remain here 
long. In two years' time he had learned seven or eight 
Indian languages, and felt himself ready for the ambition 
of his life : to find his way to the Vermilion Sea — the Gulf 
of California — for a short cut to the wealth of China and 
Japan, — an ambition which resolved itself into founding a 
province or Colonial Empire for France at the mouth of 
the Mississippi, when he discovered later on that the Mis- 
sissippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the 
Gulf of California. 

We cannot follow him in his long connection with the 
Illinois Indians and Fort St. Louis. We must leave him 
gazing from the walls of his seigniory across the broad 
bosom of Lake St. Louis at the forests of Beauharnais and 



23O THE LACHINE RAPIDS 

Chateauguay (destined afterwards to be Canada's Ther- 
mopylae) and the sunset, behind which must be a new pas- 
sage to the South Seas and the treasures of Cathay and 
Cipango — the dream which had fired the brain of every 
discoverer from Columbus and Vasco Nunez downwards. 

Nowadays Lachine suggests principally the canal by 
which the rapids are avoided, the rapids themselves, and the 
superb Canadian Pacific Railway Bridge, which is a link in 
the realization of La Salle's vast idea. Hard by, too, the 
St. Lawrence opens out into the expanse of Lake St. Louis, 
dear to Montreallers in the glowing Canadian summer. 
Seen from the bank, the rapids are most disappointing to 
people who expect them to look like Niagara. Seen from 
the deck of the steamer which runs in connection with the 
morning and evening train from Montreal, they make the 
blood of the novice creep, though the safety of the trip is 
evinced by the fact that it is no longer considered necessary 
to take a pilot from the neighbouring Indian village of 
Caughnawaga. It is said that, if the steamer is abandoned 
to the current, it is impossible for her to strike, the scour 
being so strong ; certainly, her engines are slowed ; she 
reels about like a drunken man ; right and left you see 
fierce green breakers with hissing white fillets threatening 
to swamp you at every minute. Every second thud of 
these waves upon the sides convinces you that the ship is 
aground and about to be dashed to pieces. There seems 
absolutely no chance of getting safely out of the boiling 
waters, which often rush together like a couple of foun- 
tains. Yet, after a few trips, you know that the Captain 



THE LACHINE RAPIDS 23 1 

is quite justified in sitting in his easy chair and smoking a 
cigarette all through it. It is admirably described in brief 
by Dawson : " As the steamer enters the long and turbu- 
lent rapids of the Sauk St. Louis, the river is contracted 
and obstructed by islands ; and trap dykes, crossing the 
softer limestone rocks, make, by their uneven wear, a very 
broken bottom. The fall of the river is also considerable, 
and the channel tortuous, all which circumstances com- 
bined cause this rapid to be more feared than any of the 
others. 

" As the steamer enters the rapids the engines are slowed, 
retaining a sufficient speed to give steerage way, and, rush- 
ing along with the added speed of the swift current, the 
boat soon begins to labour among the breakers and eddies. 
The passengers grow excited at the apparently narrow es- 
capes, as the steamer seems almost to touch rock after rock, 
and dips her prow into the eddies, while the turbulent wa- 
ters throw their spray over the deck." 

On the Cars and Off" (London, New York and Mel' 
bourne, 1895). 



LAKE ROTORUA 

H. R. HAWEIS 

THE thermae, or hot baths, of the near future are with- 
out doubt the marvellous volcanic springs of Ro- 
torua and the Lake Taupo district, in the North Island. 
They can now be reached from London, via Francisco, in 
thirty-three days. They concentrate in a small area all the 
varied qualities of the European springs, and other curative 
properties of an extraordinary character, which are not pos- 
sessed in the same degree by any other known waters. Be- 
fore Mr. Froude's Oceana, and the subsequent destruction 
of the famous pink terraces, little attention had been called 
to one of the most romantic and amazing spectacles in the 
world. The old terraces are indeed gone. The idyllic 
villages, the blossoming slopes are a waste of volcanic ashes 
and scoriae through which the dauntless vegetation is only 
now beginning to struggle. The blue waters are displaced 
and muddy, but the disaster of one shock could not rob the 
land of its extraordinary mystery and beauty. For a dis- 
tance of three hundred miles, south of Lake Taupo and 
running north, a volcanic crust, sometimes thin enough to 
be trodden through, separates the foot from a seething mass 
of sulphur, gas, and boiling water, which around Rotorua 
and Waikari finds strange and ample vents, in hot streams, 
clouds of vapour, warm lakes, geysers, occasionally devel- 



LAKE ROTORUA 233 

oping into appalling volcanic outbursts, which certainly in- 
vest this region with a weird terror, but also with an incon- 
ceivable charm, as white vapour breaks amidst flowering 
bushes, in the midst of true valleys of paradise; the streams 
ripple hot and crystalline over parti-coloured rocks or 
through emerald-hued mossy dells ; the warm lakes sleep 
embedded in soft, weedy banks, reflecting huge boulders, 
half clothed in tropical foliage ; coral-like deposits here and 
there of various tints reproduce the famous terraces in 
miniature ; and geysers, in odd moments, spout huge vol- 
umes of boiling water with an unearthly roar eighty feet 
into the air. At Waikari, near Lake Taupo, specimens of 
all these wonders are concentrated in a few square miles — 
the bubbling white mud pools, like foaming plaster of 
Paris, the petrifying springs, into which a boy fell some 
time ago, and getting a good silicate coat over him was 
taken out months afterwards " as good as ever," so my 
guide explained. 

" What," I said, " did he not feel even a little poorly ? " 
" What's that ? " said the guide, and the joke dawning 
on him burst into a tardy roar. 

And time would fail me to tell of the dragon's mouth, 
and open rock vomiting sulphur and steam ; the lightning 
pool, in whose depths for ever flash queer opaline suba- 
queous flashes ; the champagne pool, the Prince of Wales's 
Feathers, a geyser which can be made to play half an hour 
after a few clods of mud have blocked up a little hot 
stream; the steam hammer, the fairy bath, the donkey en- 
gine, etc. 



234 LAKE ROTORUA 

At Rotorua we bought blocks of soap and threw them in 
to make a certain big geyser spout. The Maoris have still 
the monopoly there; you pay toll, cross a rickety bridge 
with a Maori girl as guide, and then visit the pools, ter- 
races, and boiling fountains. They are not nearly so pic- 
turesque as at Waikari, which is a wilderness of blossoming 
glens, streams, and wooded vales. But you see the Maori 
in his native village. 

The volcanic crust is warm to the feet; the Maori huts 
of " toitoi " reeds and boards are all about; outside are 
warm pools ; naked boys and girls are swimming in them ; 
as we approach they emerge half out of the water; we 
throw them threepenny bits. The girls seem most eager 
and dive best — one cunning little girl about twelve or 
thirteen, I believe, caught her coin each time under water 
long before it sank, but throwing up her legs half out of 
water dived deep, pretending to fetch it up from the bot- 
tom. Sometimes there was a scramble under water for the 
coin ; the girls generally got it ; the boys seemed half lazy. 
We passed on. 

" Here is the brain pot," said our Maori belle ; a hol- 
lowed stone. It was heated naturally — the brains cooked 
very well there in the old days — not very old days either. 

" Here is the bread oven." She drew off the cloth, and 
sure enough in a hole in the hot ground there were three 
new loaves getting nicely browned. " Here are potatoes," 
and she pointed to a little boiling pool, and the potatoes 
were nearly done ; and " here is meat," — a tin let into the 
earth, that was all, contained a joint baking ; and farther on 



LAKE ROTORUA 235 

was a very good stew — at least, it being one o'clock, it 
smelt well enough. And so there is no fuel and no fire 
wanted in this and dozens of other Maori pahs or hamlets. 
In the cold nights the Maoris come out of their tents 
naked, and sit or even sleep in the hot shallow lakelets and 
pools hard by. Anything more uncanny than this walk 
through the Rotorua Geyser village can hardly be con- 
ceived. The best springs are rented from the Maoris by 
the Government, or local hotel-keepers. These are now 
increasingly fashionable bathing resorts. The finest bath 
specific for rheumatism is the Rachel bath, investing 
the body with a soft, satiny texture, and a pearly 
complexion ; the iron, sulphur, and especially the oil 
bath, from which when you emerge you have but to 
shake yourself dry. But the Priest's bath, so called from 
the discoverer, Father Mahoney — who cured himself of ob- 
stinate rheumatism — is perhaps of all the most miraculous 
in its effects, and there are no two opinions about it. Here 
take place the most incredible cures of sciatica, gout, lum- 
bago, and all sorts of rheumatic affections. It is simply a 
question of fact. 

The Countess of Glasgow herself told me about the cure 
of a certain colonel relative or aide-de-camp of the Gover- 
nor, the Earl of Glasgow. The Colonel had for years 
been a perfect martyr to rheumatism and gout. He went 
to Rotorua with his swollen legs and feet, and came away 
wearing tight boots, and " as good as ever," as my guide 
would have said. But indeed I heard of scores of similar 
cases. Let all victims who can afford it lay it well to 



236 LAKE ROTORUA 

heart. A pleasure trip, of only thirty-two days, changing 
saloon rail carriage but three times, and steamer cabins but 
twice, will insure them an almost infallible cure, even when 
chronically diseased and no longer young. This is no 
"jeujah" affair. I have seen and spoken to the fortunate 
beneficiares — you meet them all over New Zealand. Of 
course, the fame of the baths is spreading : the region is 
only just made accessible by the opening of the railway 
from Auckland to Rotorua — a ten hours' run. The Wai- 
kari and Taupo baths are very similar, and the situation is 
infinitely more romantic, but the Government, on account 
of the railway, are pushing the Rotorua baths. 

I stole out about half-past ten at night ; it was clear and 
frosty. I made my way to a warm lake at the bottom of 
the hotel grounds, a little shed and a tallow candle being 
the only accommodation provided. Anything more weird 
than that starlight bath I never experienced. I stepped in 
the deep night from the frosty bank into a temperature of 
about 8o°. 

It was a large shallow lake. I peered into the dark, but 
I could not see its extent by the dim starlight; no, not 
even the opposite banks. I swam about until I came to 
the margin — a mossy, soft margin. Dark branches of 
trees dipped in the water, and I could feel the fallen leaves 
floating about. I followed the margin round till the light 
in my wood cabin dwindled to a mere spark in the distance, 
then I swam out into the middle of the lake. When I was 
upright the warm water reached my chin ; beneath my feet 
seemed to be fine sand and gravel. Then leaning my head 



LAKE ROTORUA 237 

back I looked up at the Milky Way, and all the expanse of 
the starlit heavens. There was not a sound ; the great suns 
and planets hung like golden balls above me in the clear 
air. The star dust of planetary systems — whole universes 
— stretched away bewilderingly into the unutterable void 
of boundless immensity, mapping out here and there the 
trackless thoroughfares of God in the midnight skies. 
" Dont la poussiere" as Lamartine finely writes in oft- 
plagiarised words, " sont les Etoiles qui remontent et tombent 
devant Lui." 

How long I remained there absorbed in this super- 
mundane contemplation I cannot say. I felt myself em- 
braced simultaneously by three elements — the warm water, 
the darkness, and the starlit air. They wove a threefold 
spell about my senses, whilst my intellect seemed detached, 
free. Emancipated from earthly trammels, I seemed 
mounting up and up towards the stars. Suddenly I found 
myself growing faint, luxuriously faint. My head sank 
back, my eyes closed, there was a humming as of some 
distant waterfall in my ears. I seemed falling asleep, 
pillowed on the warm water, but common sense rescued 
me just in time. I was alone in an unknown hot lake in 
New Zealand at night, out of reach of human call. I 
roused myself with a great effort of will. I had only just 
time to make for the bank when I grew quite dizzy. The 
keen frosty air brought me unpleasantly to my senses. 
My tallow dip was guttering in its socket, and hastily re- 
suming my garments, in a somewhat shivering condition, I 
retraced the rocky path, then groped my way over the little 



238 LAKE ROTORUA 

bridge under which rushed the hot stream that fed the 
lakelet, and guided only by the dim starlight I regained my 
hotel. 

I had often looked up at the midnight skies before — at 
Charles's Wain and the Pleiades on the Atlantic, at the 
Southern Cross on the Pacific, and the resplendent Milky 
Way in the Tropics, at Mars and his so-called canals, at 
" the opal widths of the moon " from the snowy top of 
Mount Cenis, but never, no, never had I studied as- 
tronomy under such extraordinary circumstances and with 
such peculiar and enchanted environments as on this night 
at the Waikari hot springs. 

Travel and Talk (London and New York, 1896). 



THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 

C. F. GORDON-CUMMIN G 

AT last we entered the true forest-belt, and anything 
more beautiful you cannot conceive. We forgot 
our bumps and bruises in sheer delight. Oh the loveliness 
of those pines and cedars, living or dead ! For the dead 
trees are draped with the most exquisite golden-green 
lichen, which hangs in festoons many yards in length, and 
is unlike any other moss or lichen I ever saw. I can com- 
pare it to nothing but gleams of sunshine in the dark 
forest. Then, too, how beautiful are the long arcades of 
stately columns, red, yellow, or brown, 200 feet in height, 
and straight as an arrow, losing themselves in their own 
crown of misty green foliage ; and some standing solitary, 
dead and sunbleached, telling of careless fires, which burnt 
away their hearts, but could not make them fall ! 

There are so many different pines and firs, and cedars, 
that as yet I can scarcely tell one from another. The 
whole air is scented with the breath of the forests — the 
aromatic fragrance of resin and of dried cones and pine- 
needles baked by the hot sun (how it reminds me of 
Scotch firs!); and the atmosphere is clear and crystalline 
— a medium which softens nothing, and reveals the farthest 
distance in sharpest detail. Here and there we crossed 
deep gulches, where streams (swollen to torrents by the 



240 THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 

melting snow on the upper hills) rushed down over great 
boulders and prostrate trees and the victims of the winter 
gales. 

Then we came to quiet glades in the forest, where the 
soft lawn-like turf was all jewelled with flowers ; and the 
sunlight trickled through the dripping boughs of the 
feathery Douglas pines, and the jolly little chip-munks 
played hide-and-seek among the great cedars, and chased 
one another to the very tops of the tall pitch-pines, which 
stand like clusters of dark spires, more than 200 feet in 
height. It was altogether lovely ; but I think no one was 
sorry when we reached a turn in the road, where we de- 
scended from the high forest-belt, and crossing a picturesque 
stream — " Big Creek " — by name — we found ourselves in 
this comfortable ranch, which takes its name from one of 
the pioneers of the valley. 

We have spent a long day of delight in the most mag- 
nificent forest that it is possible to imagine ; and I have 
realized an altogether new sensation, for I have seen the 
Big Trees of California, and have walked round about 
them, and inside their cavernous hollows, and have done 
homage as beseems a most reverent tree- worshipper. They 
are wonderful — they are stupendous ! But as to beauty — 
no. They shall never tempt me to swerve from my 
allegiance to my true tree-love — the glorious Deodara forest 
of the Himalayas. 

If size alone were to be considered, undoubtedly the 
Sequoia stands preeminent, for-to-day we have seen several 
trees at least three times as large as the biggest Deodara in 




THE BIG TREES OE CALIFORNIA. 



THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 24 1 

the cedar shades of Kunai ; but for symmetry, and grace, 
and exquisitely harmonious lines, the " God-given " cedar 
of Himala stands alone, with its wide spreading, twisted 
arms, and velvety layers of foliage studded with pale-green 
cones, — its great red stem supporting a pyramid of green, 
far more majestic than the diminutive crown of the Big 
Trees. So at first it was hard to realize that the California 
cedars are altogether justified in concentrating all their 
growing power in one steady upward direction, so intent on 
reaching heaven that they could not afford to throw out 
one kindly bough to right or left. They remind me of 
certain rigidly good Pharisees, devoid of all loving sym- 
pathies with their fellows, with no outstretched arms of 
kindly charity — only intent on regulating their own lives 
by strictest unvarying rule. 

Great Towers of Babel they seem to me, straining up- 
ward towards the heaven which they will never reach. 

There is nothing lovable about a Sequoia. It is so 
gigantic that I feel overawed by it, but all the time I am 
conscious that I am comparing it with the odd Dutch trees 
in a Noah's Ark, with a small tuft of foliage on the top of 
a large red stem, all out of proportion. And another un- 
pleasant simile forces itself on my mind — namely, a tall 
penguin, or one of the wingless birds of New Zealand, with 
feeble little flaps in place of wings, altogether dispropor- 
tioned to their bodies. 

But this is merely an aside — lest you should suppose that 
each new land I visit wins my affections from earlier loves. 
The Deodara forests must ever keep their place in my in- 



242 THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 

nermost heart : no sunlight can ever be so lovely as that 
which plays among their boughs — no sky so blue — no ice- 
peaks so glittering as those which there cleave the heaven; 
and I am sure that these poor wretched-looking Digger 
Indians can never have the same interest for me as the 
wild Himalayan highlanders — the Paharis— who assemble 
at the little temples of carved cedar-wood in the Great 
Forest Sanctuary, to offer their strange sacrifices, and dance 
in mystic sunwise procession. 

Having said this much, I may now sing the praises of a 
newly found delight, for in truth these forests of the 
Sierras have a charm of their own, which cannot be sur- 
passed, in the amazing variety of beautiful pines, firs, and 
cedars of which they are composed. The white fir, the 
Douglas spruce, sugar-pine, and pitch-pine are the most 
abundant, and are scattered singly or in singularly pictur- 
esque groups over all the mountains hereabouts. 

But the Big Trees are only found in certain favoured spots 
— sheltered places watered by snow-fed streams, at an average 
of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet above the sea. Eight distinct 
groves have been discovered, all growing in rich, deep, 
vegetable mould, on a foundation of powdered granite. 
Broad gaps lie between the principal groves, and it is ob- 
served that these invariably lie in the track of the great ice- 
rivers, where the accumulation of powdered rock and gravel 
formed the earliest commencement of the soil, which by 
slow degrees became rich, and deep, and fertile. There is 
even reason to believe that these groves are pre-Adamite. 
A very average tree (only twenty-three feet in diameter) 



THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 243 

having been felled, its annual rings were counted by three 
different persons, whose calculations varied from 2,125 to 
2,137; and this tree was by no means very aged-looking — 
probably not half the age of some of its big relations, one 
of which (on King's river) is forty-four feet in diameter. 

Then, again, some of the largest of these trees are lying 
prostrate on the ground j and in the ditches formed by their 
crash, trees have grown up of such a size, and in such a 
position, as to prove that the fallen giants have lain there 
for centuries — a thousand years or more ; and although 
partially embedded in the earth, and surrounded by damp 
forest, their almost imperishable timber is as sound as if 
newly felled. So it appears that a Sequoia may lie on 
damp earth for untold ages without showing any symptom 
of decay. Yet in the southern groves huge prostrate trees 
are found quite rotten, apparently proving that they must 
have lain there for an incalculable period. 

Of the eight groves aforesaid, the most northerly is 
Calaveras, and the most southerly is on the south fork of 
the Tule river. The others are the Stanislaus, the Merced 
and Crane Flat, the Mariposa, the Fresno, the King's and 
Kaweah rivers, and the north fork of the Tule river. It is 
worthy of note that the more northerly groves are found at 
the lowest level, Calaveras being only 4,759 feet above the 
sea, while the Tule and Kaweah belts range over the 
Sierras at about 7,000 feet. 

The number of Sequoias in the northern groves is 
reckoned to be as follows : Calaveras, ninety trees upwards 
of fifteen feet in diameter; Stanislaus, or South Calaveras 



244 THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 

grove, distant six miles from North Calaveras, contains 
1,380 trees over one foot in diameter (many of them being 
over thirty feet in diameter). Mariposa has its 600 
Sequoias ; and the beautiful Fresno grove, some miles from 
Mariposa, has 1,200. Merced has fifty, and Tuolumne 
thirty. The southern belts "have not yet been fully ex- 
plored, but are apparently the most extensive. 

The Mariposa grove, where we have been to-day, is the 
only one which has been reserved by Government as a 
park for the nation. It lies five miles from here. I should 
rather say there are two groves. The lower grove lies in a 
sheltered valley between two mountain-spurs ; the upper 
grove, as its name implies, occupies a higher level, 6,500 
feet above the sea. 

We breakfasted very early, and by 6 a. m. were in the 
saddle. Capital, sure-footed ponies were provided for all 
who chose to ride. Some of the gentlemen preferred walk- 
ing. From this house we had to ascend about 2,500 feet. 

As we gradually worked uphill through the coniferous 
belts, the trees seemed gradually to increase in size, so that 
the eye got accustomed by degrees ; and when at length we 
actually reached the Big-Tree grove we scarcely realized 
that we were in the presence of the race of giants. Only 
when we occasionally halted at the base of a colossal pillar, 
somewhere about eighty feet in circumference, and about 
250 in height, and compared it with its neighbours, and, 
above all, with ourselves — poor, insignificant pigmies — 
could we bring home to our minds a sense of its gigantic 
proportions. 



THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 245 

With all the reverence due to antiquity, we gazed on 
these Methuselahs of the forest, to whom a few centuries 
more or less in the record of their long lives are a trifle 
scarcely worth mentioning. But our admiration was more 
freely bestowed on the rising generation, the beautiful young 
trees, only about five or six hundred years of age, and 
averaging thirty feet in circumference ; while still younger 
trees, the mere children of about a hundred years old, still 
retain the graceful habits of early youth, and are very 
elegant in their growth — though, of course, none but mere 
babies bear the slightest resemblance to the tree as we 
know it on English lawns. 

It really is heartbreaking to see the havoc that has been 
done by careless fires. Very few of the older trees have 
escaped scathless. Most of this damage has been done by 
Indians, who burn the scrub to scare the game, and the fire 
spreads to the trees, and there smoulders unheeded for 
weeks, till happily some chance extinguishes it. Many 
lords of the forest have thus been burnt out, and have at 
last fallen, and lie on the ground partly embedded, forming 
great tunnels, hollow from end to end, so that in several 
cases two horsemen can ride abreast inside the tree from 
(what was once) its base to its summit. 

We halted at the base of the Grizzly Giant, which well 
deserves its name ; for it measures ninety-three feet in cir- 
cumference, and looks so battered and weather-worn that it 
probably is about the most venerable tree in the forest. It 
is one of the most picturesque Sequoias I have seen, just 
because it has broken through all the rules of symmetry, so 



246 THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 

rigidly observed by its well conditioned, well-grown breth- 
ren ; and instead of being a vast cinnamon-coloured col- 
umn, with small boughs near the summit, it has taken a 
line of its own, and thrown out several great branches, each 
about six feet in diameter — in other words, about as large 
as a fine old English beech-tree ! 

This poor old tree has a great hollow burnt in it (I think 
the Indians must have used it as a kitchen), and our half 
dozen ponies and mules were stabled in the hollow — a most 
picturesque group. It seems strange to see trees thus 
scorched and charred, with their insides clean burnt out, 
yet, on looking far, far overhead, to perceive them crowned 
with fresh blue-green, as if nothing ailed them, so great is 
their vitality. Benjamin Taylor says of such a one, "It 
did not know that it ought to be dead. The tides of life 
flowed so mightily up that majestic column ! " 

The Indians say that all other trees grow, but that the 
Big Trees are the special creation of the Great Spirit. So 
here too, you see, we have, not tree-worship, but something 
of the reverence accorded to the cedar in all lands. The 
Hebrew poet sang of " the trees of the Lord, even the 
cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted." And the Hill 
tribes of Northern India build a rudely carved temple be- 
neath each specially magnificent clump of Deodar, to mark 
that they are " God's trees " ; while in the sacred Sanskrit 
poems they are called Deva dara or Deva daru, meaning 
the gift, the spouse, the word of God, but in any case, de- 
noting the sanctity of the tree. 

Whether these Californian Indians had any similar title 



THE BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA 247 

for their Big Trees, I have failed to learn ; but the name 
by which they are known to the civilized world is that of 
Sequoyah, a half-caste Cherokee Indian, who distinguished 
himself by inventing an alphabet and a written language for 
his tribe. It was a most ingenious alphabet, consisting of 
eighty-six characters, each representing a syllable, and was 
so well adapted to its purpose that it was extensively used 
by the Indians before the white man had ever heard of it. 
Afterwards it was adopted by the missionaries, who started 
a printing-press, with types of this character, and issued a 
newspaper for the Cherokee tribe, by whom this singular 
alphabet is still used. 

When the learned botanist, Endlicher, had to find a suit- 
able name for the lovely redwood cedars, he did honour to 
Sequoyah, by linking his memory forever with that of the 
evergreen forests of the Coast Range. And when after- 
wards these Big Trees of the same race were discovered on 
the Sierras, they of course were included under the same 
family name. 

Granite Crags (Edinburgh and London, 1884). 



GERSOPPA FALLS 

W. M. YOOL 

THESE, the most famous falls in India, are situated on 
the Siruvatti (or Sharavati) river, which at that 
part of its course forms the boundary between the north- 
west corner of the native state of Mysore and the Bombay 
Presidency. The source of the river is in Mysore, half- 
way up Koda Chadri, a hill about five thousand feet high, 
near the famous old town of Nuggur, once the seat of the 
Rajahs of Mysore, where are still to be seen the ruins of an 
old fort and palace, and the walls of the town, eight miles 
in circumference. 

The natives have a legend that the god Rama shot an 
arrow from his bow on to Koda Chadri, and that the river 
sprang from the spot where the arrow fell, and hence the 
name Siruvatti or " arrow-born." From its source the river 
flows north for nearly thirty miles through the heart of the 
Western Ghauts, and then turns west and flows down 
through the jungles of North Canara to the Indian Ocean 
— another thirty miles. Shortly after taking the bend west- 
wards there comes the fall, which, on account of its height, 
is worthy of being reckoned amongst the great waterfalls of 
the world. Here, at one leap, the river falls eight hundred 
and thirty feet ; and as, at the brink, it is about four hundred 




GERSOPPA FALLS. 



GERSOPPA FALLS 249 

yards wide, there are few, if any, falls in the world to 
match it. 

During the dry weather the river comes over in four 
separate falls, but in the height of the monsoon these be- 
come one, and as at that time the water is nearly thirty feet 
deep, the sight must be truly one of the world's wonders. 
It has been calculated that in flood-time more horse-power 
is developed by the Gersoppa Falls than by Niagara. This 
of course is from the much greater height of Gersoppa, eight 
hundred and thirty feet against about one hundred and sixty 
feet of Niagara, although the Niagara Falls are much wider 
and vaster in volume. The Kaieteur Falls of the Esse- 
quibo in British Guiana are seven hundred and forty-one 
feet sheer and eighty-eight more of sloping cataract, but the 
river there is only one hundred yards wide. At the Victoria 
Falls, the Zambesi, one thousand yards wide, falls into an 
abyss four hundred feet deep. 

My friend and I visited the falls in the end of September, 
about a month after the close of the monsoon, when there 
were four falls with plenty of water in them. The dry 
weather is the best for the sight-seer, as, during the mon- 
soon, the rain is so heavy and continuous that there would 
not be much pleasure in going there, although doubtless the 
sight would be grander and more awe-inspiring. The 
drainage area above the falls is seven hundred and fifty 
square miles, and the average yearly rainfall over this tract 
is two hundred and twenty inches, nearly the whole of 
which falls in the three monsoon months, June, July, Au- 
gust ; so it can be imagined what an enormous body of 



250 GERSOPPA FALLS 

water comes down the river in these months. There is a 
bungalow for the use of visitors on the Bombay side of the 
river, about a hundred yards away from the falls, built on 
the very brink of the precipice overhanging the gorge 
through which the river flows after taking the leap. So 
close to the edge is it that one could jump from the veranda 
sheer into the bed of the river nearly a thousand feet below. 

The four falls are called The Rajah, The Roarer, The 
Rocket, and La Dame Blanche. The Rajah and Roarer fall 
into a horseshoe-shaped cavern, while the Rochet and La 
Dame Blanche come over where the precipice is at right 
angles to the flow of the river, and are very beautiful falls. 
The Rajah comes over with a rush, shoots clear out from 
the rock, and falls one unbroken column of water the 
whole eight hundred and thirty feet. The Roarer comes 
rushing at an angle of sixty degrees down a huge furrow in 
the rock for one hundred and fifty feet, making a tremen- 
dous noise, then shoots right out into the middle of the 
horseshoe, and mingles its waters with those of the Rajah 
about half-way down. The Rocket falls about two hundred 
feet in sheer descent on to a huge knob of rock, where it is 
dashed into spray, which falls in beautiful smoky rings, 
supposed to resemble the rings formed by the bursting of 
rockets. La Dame Blanche, which my friend and I thought 
the most beautiful, resembles a snow-white muslin veil fall- 
ing in graceful folds, and clothing the black precipice from 
head to foot. 

From the bungalow a fine view is got of the Rocket and 
La Dame Blanche, and when the setting sun lights up these 



GERSOPPA FALLS 25 I 

falls and forms numerous rainbows in the spray, it makes 
an indescribably beautiful scene. Here one is alone with 
Nature, not a house or patch of cultivation anywhere. In 
front is the river, and all around are mountains and prime- 
val forests, while the ceaseless roar of the waterfall adds a 
grandeur and a solemnity not easily described. 

Near where theRajah goes over is a projecting rock 
called the Rajah's Rock, so named because one of the Ra- 
jahs of Nuggur tried to build a small pagoda on it, but be- 
fore being finished, it was washed away. The cutting in 
the rock for the foundation is still visible. To any one 
who has a good head, a fine view of the horseshoe cavern 
can be had from this rock. The plan is to lie down on 
your stomach, crawl to the edge, and look over, when you 
can see straight down into the pool where the waters are 
boiling and seething nearly a thousand feet below. I took 
a few large stones to the edge and dropped them over, but 
they were lost to view long before they reached the bottom. 
It was quite an appreciable time after my losing sight of 
them before I observed the faint splash they made near the 
edge of the pool. 

In order to get to the foot of the falls it is necessary to 
cross the river to the Mysore side, as there is no possibility 
of getting down to the Bombay side. About half a mile 
above the falls there is a canoe, dug out of the trunk of a 
tree, which belongs to the native who looks after the bun- 
galow, and ferries people across. A path has been made to 
enable visitors to get to the foot of the falls, and many fine 
views of all four are got while descending. The first half 



252 GERSOPPA FALLS 

of the way down is fairly easy, but after that the track is a 
succession of steps down great boulders and across slabs of 
rock, rendered as slippery as ice by the constant spray. 
Ere my friend and I reached the bottom we were soaking 
wet, and realized when too late that we should have left 
the greater part of our clothes behind us. By going to the 
bottom a much better idea of the immense height of the 
falls is got, and the climb up again helps still more to make 
one realize it. From the bungalow the largest rocks in the 
bed of the river looked like sheep ; but we found them to 
be huge boulders, ten and twelve feet high and about 
twenty feet across. 

The falls seem to have become known to Europeans 
about 1840, but were very seldom visited in those days. 
Even now the number of visitors is small, as the nearest 
railway is eighty miles off, and there is no way of procur- 
ing supplies with the exception of a little milk and a 
chicken to be had from the above-mentioned native. 

For a good many years there was great uncertainty about 
the height of the falls, but the question was finally set at 
rest by two naval lieutenants who plumbed them in 1857. 
The modus operandi was as follows : Their ship being off 
the coast near the mouth of the river, they got a cable 
transported to the falls, and stretched it across the horse- 
shoe — a distance of seventy-four yards. Having seen that 
the cable was properly secured at both ends, they got a cage 
fixed on, and one of them got into it and was hauled out 
until he was in the centre. From the cage he let down a 
sounding line with a buoy attached to the end of it, and 



GERSOPPA FALLS 253 

found the depth to the surface of the water to be eight hun- 
dred and thirty feet. After satisfactorily accomplishing 
this feat, they proceeded to the foot of the falls, and con- 
structed a raft so as to plumb the pools, which they did, 
and found the greatest depth to be one hundred and thirty- 
two feet. This was done near the end of the dry weather, 
when there was very little water in the river, and they were 
able to temporarily divert the Rajah and Roarer into the 
Rocket, without doing which it would have been impossible 
to plumb the horseshoe pool — the deepest one — satisfactorily. 

About a mile from the bungalow is a hill called Nishani 
Goodda or Cairn Hill, from the top of which a magnificent 
view of the surrounding country is got. To the east lie 
the table-lands of the Deccan and Mysore, the flat expanse 
broken here and there by an occasional hill. North and 
south stretches the chain of the Ghauts, rising peak after 
peak as far as the eye can see (Koda Chadri, where the 
Siruvatti rises, being very conspicuous) ; while to the west 
one looks down on the lowlands of jungle-covered Canara, 
with glimpses of the river here and there, and beyond them 
gleams the Indian Ocean. 

The bungalow book in which visitors inscribe their 
names is very interesting reading. The records go back to 
1840, and many travellers have written a record of what 
they did when there; while a few, inspired by the scene, 
have expressed their feelings in poetry, some of it well 
worth copying and preserving by any one who has seen the 
falls. 

Chambers' yournal (London, 1896). 



ETNA 

ALEXANDRE DUMAS 

THE word Etna, according to the savants, is a Phoe- 
nician word meaning the mouth of the furnace. The 
Phoenician language, as you see, was of the order of that 
one spoken of by Covielle to the Bourgeois Gentilhornme, 
which expressed many things in a few words. Many poets 
of antiquity pretend that it was the spot where Deucalion 
and Pyrrha took refuge during the flood. Upon this score, 
Signor Gemellaro, who was born at Nicolosi, may certainly 
claim the honour of having descended in a direct line from 
one of the first stones which they threw behind them. 
That would leave, as you see, the Montmorencys, the 
Rohans, and the Noailles, far behind. 

Homer speaks of Etna, but he does not designate it a 
volcano. Pindar calls it one of the pillars of the sky. 
Thucydides mentions three great explosions, from the 
epoch of the arrival of the Grecian colonies up to his own 
lifetime. Finally, there were two eruptions in the time of 
Denys ; then they followed so rapidly that only the most 
violent ones have been counted. l 

1 The principal eruptions of Etna took place in the year 662, b. c, and 
in a. d. 225, 420, 812, 1 169, 1285, J 3 2 9> x 333> 1408, 1444, 1446, 1447, 
1536, 1603, 1607, 1610, 1614, 1619, 1634, 1669, 1682, 1688, 1689, 1702, 
1766, and 1781. 



ETNA 255 

Since the eruption of 1781, Etna has had some little de- 
sire to overthrow Sicily ; but, as these caprices have not 
had serious results, Etna may be is permitted to stand upon 
what it has accomplished — it is unique in its self-respect — 
and to maintain its eminence as a volcano. 

Of all these eruptions, one of the most terrible was that 
of 1669. As the eruption of 1669 started from Monte 
Rosso, and as Monte Rosso is only half a mile to the left 
of Nicolosi, we took our way, Jadin and I, to visit the 
crater, after having promised Signor Gemellaro to come to 
dinner with him. 

It must be understood beforehand that Etna regards 
itself too far above ordinary volcanos to proceed in their 
fashion : Vesuvius, Stromboli, and even Hekla pour the 
lava over their craters, just as wine spills over a too-full 
glass ; Etna does not give itself this trouble. Its crater is 
only a crater for show, which is content to play cup and 
ball with incandescent rocks large as ordinary houses, 
which one follows in their aerial ascension as one would 
follow a bomb issuing from a mortar ; but, during this time 
the force of the eruption is really felt elsewhere. In re- 
ality, when Etna is at work, it throws up very simply upon 
its shoulders, at one place or another, a kind of boil about 
the size of Montmartre ; then this boil breaks, and out of 
it streams a river of lava which follows the slope, descends, 
burning, or overturning everything that it finds before it, 
and ends by extinguishing itself in the sea. This method 
of procedure is the cause of Etna's being covered with a 
number of little craters which are formed like immense 



256 ETNA 

hay-mows ; each of these secondary volcanos has its date 
and its own name, and all have occasioned in their time, 
more or less noise and more or less ravage. 

We got astride of our mounts and started on our way 
upon a night that seemed to us of terrible darkness as we 
issued from a well-lighted room ; but, by degrees, we be- 
gan to distinguish the landscape, thanks to the light of the 
myriads of stars that sprinkled the sky. It seemed from 
the way in which our mules sank beneath us that we were 
crossing sand. Soon we entered the second region, or the 
forest region, that is if the few scattered, poor, and crooked 
trees merit the name of forest. We marched about two 
hours, confidently following the road our guide took us, or 
rather our mules, a road which, moreover, to judge by the 
eternal declivities and ascents, seemed terribly uneven. 
Already, we realized the wisdom of Signor Gemellaro's 
provisions against the cold, and we wrapped ourselves in 
our hooded great-coats a full hour before we arrived at a 
kind of roofless hovel where our mules stopped of them- 
selves. We were at the Casa del Bosco or della Neve, that 
is to say, the Forest or the Snow, names which it merits in 
either summer or winter. Our guide told us this was our 
halting-place. Upon his invitation, we alighted and en- 
tered. We were half-way on the road to the Casa 
Ingle se. 

During our halt the sky was enriched by a crescent, 
which, although slender, gave us a little light. We con- 
tinued to march a quarter of an hour longer between trees 
which became scarcer every twenty feet and finally disap- 



ETNA 257 

peared altogether. We were about to enter the third 
region of Etna, and we knew from the steps of the mules 
when they were passing over lava, crossing ashes, or when 
they trampled a kind of moss, the only vegetation that 
creeps up to this point. As for our eyes, they were of very 
little use, the sheen appearing to us more or less coloured, 
and that was all, for we could not distinguish a single de- 
tail in the midst of this darkness. 

However, in proportion as we ascended, the cold became 
more intense, and, notwithstanding our cloaks, we were 
freezing. This change of temperature had checked con- 
versation, and each of us, occupied in trying to keep him- 
self warm, advanced in silence. I led the way, and if I 
could not see the ground on which we advanced, I could 
distinguish perfectly on our right the gigantic escarpments 
and the immense peaks, that reared themselves like giants, 
and whose black silhouettes stood out boldly upon the deep 
blue of the sky. The further we advanced, the stranger 
and more fantastic shapes did these apparitions assume ; 
we well understood that Nature had not originally made 
these mountains as they are and that it was a long con- 
test that had ravaged them. We were upon the battle- 
field of the Titans ; we clambered over Pelion piled upon 
Ossa. 

All this was terrible, sombre, and majestic ; I saw and I 
felt thoroughly the poetry of this nocturnal trip, and mean- 
while I was so cold that I had not the courage to exchange 
a word with Jadin to ask him if all these visions were not 
the result of the weakness that I experienced, and if I were 



258 ETNA 

not dreaming. From time to time strange and unfamiliar 
noises, that did not resemble in the slightest degree any 
noises that one is accustomed to hear, started from the 
bowels of the earth, and seemed to moan and wail like a 
living being. These noises had something so unexpectedly 
lugubrious and solemn about them that they made your 
blood run cold. . . . We walked about three-quarters 
of an hour upon the steep and rough road, then we found 
ourselves upon a slightly inclined slope where every now 
and then we crossed large patches of snow and in which I 
was plunged up to my knees, and these finally became con- 
tinuous. At length the dark vault of the sky began to pale 
and a feeble twilight illumined the ground upon which we 
walked, bringing with it air even more icy than we had 
heretofore breathed. In this wan and uncertain light we 
perceived before us something resembling a house; we ap- 
proached it, Jadin trotting upon his mule, and I coming as 
fast as possible. The guide pushed open the door and we 
found ourselves in the Casa Inglese, built at the foot of the 
cone, for the great relief of travellers. 

It was half-past three o'clock in the morning; our guide 
reminded us that we had still three-quarters of an hour's 
climb at least, and, if we wished to reach the top of the 
cone before sunrise, we had not a moment to lose. 

We left the Casa Inglese. We began to distinguish ob- 
jects : all around us extended a vast field of snow, in the 
centre of which, making an angle of about forty-five de- 
grees, the cone of Etna rose. Above us all was in dark- 
ness; towards the east only a light tint of opal coloured the 



ETNA 259 

sky on which the mountains of Calabria were vigorously 
outlined. 

At a hundred feet from the Casa Inglese we en- 
countered the first waves of the lava plateau whose black 
hue did not accord with the snow, in the midst of which it 
rose like a sombre island. We had to mount these solid 
waves, jumping from one to another, as I had done at 
Chamouni and the Mer de Glace, with this difference, that 
the sharp edges tore the leather of our shoes and cut our 
feet. This passage, which lasted a quarter of an hour, was 
one of the most trying of the route. 

We were now about a third of the way up, and we had 
only taken about half an hour to ascend four hundred feet ; 
the east brightened more and more ; the fear of not arriving 
at the summit of the cone in time to see the sunrise lent us 
courage, and we started again with new enthusiasm, with- 
out pausing to look at the immense horizon which widened 
beneath our feet at each step; but the further we advanced, 
the more the difficulties increased ; at each step the slope 
became more abrupt, the earth more friable, and the air 
rarer. Soon, on our right, we began to hear subterranean 
roarings that attracted our attention ; our guide walked in 
front of us and led us to a fissure from which came a great 
noise and a thick sulphurous smoke blown out by an in- 
terior current of air. Approaching the edges of this cleft, 
we saw at an unfathomable depth a bottom of incandescent 
and red liquid ; and when we stamped our feet, the ground 
resounded in the distance like a drum. Happily it was 
perfectly calm, for if the wind had blown this smoke over 



260 ETNA 

to our side, we should have been asphyxiated, for it is 
charged with a terrible fumes of sulphur. 

We found ourselves opposite the crater, — an immense 
well, eight miles in circumference and 900 feet deep ; the 
walls of this excavation were covered with scarified matter 
of sulphur and alum from top to bottom ; in the bottom as 
far as we could see at the distance from where we stood, 
there was some matter in eruption, and from the abyss there 
ascended a tenuous and tortuous smoke, resembling a gigantic 
serpent standing on his tail. The edges of the crater were 
cut out irregularly at a greater or less height. We were at 
one of the highest points. 

Our guide permitted us to look at this sight for a mo- 
ment, holding us back, however, every now and then by 
our clothing when we approached too near the precipice, 
for the rock is so friable that it could easily give way be- 
neath our feet, and we should repeat the joke of Empedocles ; 
then he asked us to remove ourselves about twenty feet 
from the crater to avoid all accidents, and to look around 
us. 

The east, whose opal tints we had noticed when leaving 
the Casa Inglese, had changed to tender rose, and was now in- 
undated with the flames of the sun whose disc we began to 
perceive above the mountains of Calabria. Upon the sides 
of these mountains of a dark and uniform blue, the towns 
and villages stood out like little white points. The strait 
of Messina seemed a simple river, while to the right and 
left we saw the sea like an immense mirror. To the left, 
this mirror was spotted with several black dots : these black 



ETNA 26l 

dots were the islands of the Lipariote archipelago. From 
time to time one of these islands glimmered like an inter- 
mittent light-house ; this was Stromboli, throwing out 
flames. In the west, everything was in darkness. The 
shadow of Etna cast itself over all Sicily. 

For three-quarters of an hour the spectacle did nothing 
but gain in magnificence. I have seen the sun rise on 
Rigi and the Faulhorn, those two Titans of Switzerland : 
nothing is comparable to the view on Etna's summit ; 
Calabria from Pizzo to Cape dell Armi, the pass from 
Scylla to Reggio, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Ionian Sea and 
the iEolian Islands that seem within reach of your hand j 
to the right, Malta floating on the horizon like a light 
mist ; around us the whole of Sicily, seen from a bird's-eye 
view with its shores denticulated with capes, promontories, 
harbours, creeks and roads ; its fifteen cities and three hun- 
dred villages ; its mountains which seem like hills ; its 
valleys which we know are furrowed with ploughs; its 
rivers which seem threads of silver, as in autumn they fall 
from the sky to the grasses of the meadows ; and, finally, 
the immense roaring crater, full of flames and smoke, over- 
head Heaven and at its feet Hell : such a spectacle, made 
us forget fatigue, danger, and suffering. I admired it all 
without reservation, with my eyes and my soul. Never 
had God seemed so near and, consequently, so great. 

We remained there an hour, dominating all the old 
world of Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Theocritus, without 
the idea of touching a pencil occurring to Jadin or myself, 
until it seemed to us that this picture had entered deeply 



262 ETNA 

into our hearts and remained graven there without the aid 
of ink or sketch. Then we threw a last glance over this 
horizon of three hundred leagues, a sight seen once in a life- 
time, and we began our descent. 

Le Speronare : Impressions de Voyage (Paris, 1 836.) 



PIKE'S PEAK AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS 

IZA DUFFUS HARDY 

COLORADO SPRINGS— so called because the 
springs are at Manitou, five miles off, is a prairie 
town on a plateau six thousand feet high, above which 
Pike's Peak stands sentinel, lifting his snow-capped head 
fourteen thousand feet into the clear depths of azure 
light, in which no fleck of cloud floats from morn to night 
and night to morn again. It is April, and not a drop of 
rain has fallen since the previous August. Mid-April, and 
not a leaf upon a tree. Not a flower or a bird seems to 
flourish here. No spring-blossom scents the keen fresh life- 
giving air; no warbler soars high up into the stainless sap- 
phire sky. The leafless cottonwood trees stand out white 
in the flood of sunlight like trees of silver, their delicate 
bare branches forming a shining tangle of silvery network 
against that intense blue background. 

The place all looks bleak and barren to us ; the wild 
grandeur of the mountains is unrelieved by the rich shadows 
of the pine forests or the sunny green glints of meadows 
that soften Alpine scenery. No flower gardens, no smiling 
valleys, no velvet turf, no fragrant orchards, no luxuriant 
hedge rows ; only the lonely mountain range, the crowning 
height of Pike's Peak stern and solitary in his icy exaltation, 



264 PIKE'S PEAK AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS 

and the dead level of the prairie, stretching away eastward 
for hundreds and hundreds of miles, declining always at a 
gradual and imperceptible angle till it slopes down to the 
very banks of the great Mississippi, over a thousand 
miles away. 

But, although the spot does not seem altogether a Para- 
dise to us, it is a veritable Eden for consumptive invalids. 
Here they come to find again the lost angel of Health, and 
seldom seek again, unless they come too late. People live 
here who can live nowhere else. They long to return to 
their far-off" homes ; but home to them means death. They 
must live in this Colorado air, or die. There is a snake in 
the grass of this Eden, where they have drunk the elixir of 
a new life, and its name is Nostalgia. They long — some 
of them — for the snowy winters and flowery summers of 
their eastern homes. Others settle happily and con- 
tentedly in the endless sunshine of winterless, summerless 
Colorado. 

We rattled along cheerily in our light spring-waggon over 
the smooth, fine roads, viewing the landscape from beneath 
the parasols which only partially shielded us from the blaz- 
ing sun. Although the gentleman from Tennessee pre- 
served a truly western taciturnity, our driver beguiled the 
way with instructive and amusing converse. He pointed 
out to us, flourishing by the wayside, the soap-weed, whose 
root is a perfect substitute for soap, and taught us to distin- 
guish between the blue joint-grass — yellow as hay in winter, 
but now taking on its hue of summer green — and the grey- 
ish neutral-tinted buffalo-grass, which is most succulent and 



PIKE'S PEAK AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS 265 

nutritious, although its looks belie it, for a less tempting- 
looking herb I never had the pleasure of seeing. He also 
pointed out the dead body of a cow lying on a desolate 
plain, and informed us it would dry up to a mummy in no 
time j it was the effect of the air ; dead cattle speedily 
mummified, and were no nuisance. Another dried-up bo- 
vine skeleton bore witness to the truth of his assertion. 

We observed that the soil looked barren as desert sand ; 
but he replied that it only required irrigation to be extremely 
fertile, showed us the irrigating ditches cut across the 
meadows, and described to us some of the marvellous pro- 
ductions of Colorado — a single cabbage-head weighing forty 
pounds, etc. He told us of the wondrous glories of the 
Arkansas canon and the Mount of the Holy Cross — which, 
alas ! we were not to see, the roads thither being as yet 
rough travelling for ladies. He sang the praises of the 
matchless climate, and the joys of the free, healthful life, 
far from the enervating and deteriorating influences of great 
cities. Indeed, it appeared from his conversation that no- 
where on the face of the habitable globe could there be 
found any spot even remotely emulating the charms of 
Colorado — an opinion shared by every Coloradian with 
whom we held any intercourse. 

Our way then led up the Ute Pass, once, in days not so 
far back frequented by the Ute Indians. Now, not an 
Indian is to be seen for miles ; they have all been swept 
back on to a reservation, and the story of the Ute outbreak 
there of the past autumn is yet fresh in the minds of all. 
The Ute Pass is a winding, uphill road along the side of a 



266 PIKE'S PEAK AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS 

deep canon, the rocks here and there overhanging it threaten- 
ingly, and affording a welcome shade from the piercing sun- 
rays, which follow us even here. The steep walls of the 
canon are partly clothed and crowned with pine-trees, and 
along its depths a rapid, sparkling stream bubbles and leaps 
over the rocks and boulders. 

Up the pass a waggon-train is toiling on its way to the 
great new mining centre — the giant baby city — Leadville, 
the youngest and most wonderful child of the prolific west ! 
In this train we get entangled, and move slowly along with 
it — waggons and cattle before us, waggons and cattle 
behind us — tourists, teamsters, miners, drivers, drov- 
ers, dogs, all huddled together in seemingly inextricable 
confusion. 

At the top of the pass, we tourists turn : and, while the 
waggon-train plods on its slow way, we make the best of 
our way back down the hill, and take the road to the 
Garden of the Gods. 

Why the Garden of the Gods ? I do not myself perceive 
the appropriateness of the appellation. There is not a 
flower in sight; only a few stunted shrubs, and forlorn- 
looking, thin trees. It is a natural enclosure, of fifty or 
more acres, such as in Colorado is called a " park," scat- 
tered with rocks of a rich red hue, and the wildest and 
most grotesque shapes imaginable. 

The giants might have made it their playground, and left 
their playthings around them. Here, tossed and flung 
about as if by a careless hand, lie the huge round boulders 
with which they played at ball. Here they amused them- 



PIKE'S PEAK AND THE GARDEN OF THE GODS 267 

selves by balancing an immense mass of stone on a point 
so cunningly that it has stood there for centuries looking as 
if a touch would overturn it. There they have hewn a 
high rock into the rough semblance of a veiled woman — 
here they have sculptured a man in a hat — there piled up a 
rude fortress, and there built a church. 

But the giants have deserted their playground ages ago, 
and trees have grown up between the fantastic formations 
they left. It is a strange weird scene, and suggested to us 
forcibly that if we would " view it aright" we should 

" Go view it by the pale moonlight ! ' 

How spectral those strange shapes would look in the 
gloom ! What ghostly life would seem to breathe in them 
when the white moonbeams bathed their eerie outlines in 
her light ! There is a something lost in the Garden of the 
Gods to us who only saw it with a flood of sunshine glow- 
ing on its ruddy rocks. Most of these have been chris- 
tened according to their form — the Nun, the Scotchman, 
the Camel, and so on. 

Two huge walls of red and white stone, rising perpen- 
dicularly a sheer three hundred feet, form the gate of the 
Garden. Through this colossal and for-ever-open gate we 
looked back with a sigh of farewell — our glimpse of the 
scene seemed so brief! — and we half-fancied that the veiled 
Nun bowed her dark head in the sunshine in parting salute 
as we were whirled out of sight. 

Between Two Oceans, or Sketches of American Travel 
(London, 1884). 



THE GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND 

SIR RICHARD F. BURTON 

ON the eastern slope of the Frachytic pile and extend- 
ing round the north of the rock-wall are the Hvers 
and Geysirs. Nothing can be meaner than their appear- 
ance, especially to the tourist who travels as usual from 
Reykjavik; nothing more ridiculous than the contrast of 
this pin's point, this atom of pyritic formation, with the 
gigantic theory which it was held to prove, earth's central 
fire, the now obsolete dream of classical philosophers and 
" celebrated academicians " ; nothing more curious than the 
contrast between Nature and Art, between what we see in 
life and what we find in travellers' illustrations. Sir John 
Stanley, perpetuated by Henderson, first gave consistence 
to the popular idea of " that most wonderful fountain, the 
Great Geysir ; " such is the character given to it by the 
late Sir Henry Holland, a traveller who belonged to the 
" wunderbar " epoch of English travel, still prevalent in 
Germany. From them we derive the vast background of 
black mountain, the single white shaft of fifty feet high, 
domed like the popular pine-tree of Vesuvian smoke, the 
bouquet of water, the Prince of Wales feathers, double- 
plumed and triple-plumed, charged with stones ; and the 
minor jets and side squirts of the foreground, where pig- 



GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND 269 

mies stand and extend the arm of illustration and the hand 
of marvel. 

On this little patch, however, we may still study the 
seven forms of Geysir life. First, is the baby still sleep- 
ing in the bosom of Mother Earth, the airy wreath escap- 
ing from the hot clay ground j then comes the infant 
breathing strongly, and at times puking in the nurse's lap ; 
third, is the child simmering with impatience ; and fourth, 
is the youth whose occupation is to boil over. The full- 
grown man is represented by the " Great Gusher " in the 
plenitude of its lusty power; old age, by the tranquil, 
sleepy " laug " ; and second childhood and death, mostly 
from diphtheria or quinsy, in the empty red pits strewed 
about the dwarf plain. " Patheticum est ! " as the old 
scholiast exclaimed. 

It is hardly fair to enter deeply in the history of the 
Great Geysir, but a few words may be found useful. The 
silence of Ari Frodi (a. d., 1075), and of the Landnama- 
bok, so copious in its details, suggests that it did not exist 
in the Eleventh Century ; and the notice of Saxo Gram- 
naticus in the preface to his History of Denmark proves 
that it had become known before the end of the Thir- 
teenth. Hence it is generally assumed that the vol- 
canic movements of a. d., 1294, which caused the 
disappearance of many hot springs, produced those now 
existing. Forbes clearly proved the growth of the tube by 
deposition of silex on the lips ; a process which will end by 
scaling the spring : he placed its birth about 1060 years 
ago, which seems to be thoroughly reasonable ; and thus 



270 GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND 

for its manhood we have a period of about six cen- 
turies. 

In 1770 the Geyser spouted eleven times a day; in 18 14 
it erupted every six hours; and in 1872 once between two 
and a week. Shepherd vainly wasted six days ; a French 
party seven ; and there are legends of a wasted fortnight. 

Remains now only to walk over the ground, which divides 
itself into four separate patches : the extinct, to the north-west, 
below and extending round the north of the Laugarfjall 
buttress ; the Great Geysir ; the Strokkr and the Thikku- 
hverar to the south. 

In the first tract earth is uniformly red, oxidized by air, 
not as in poetical Syria by the blood of Adonis. The hot, 
coarse bolus, or trachytic clay, soft and unctuous, astrin- 
gent, and adhering to the tongue is deposited in horizontal 
layers, snowy-white, yellow-white, ruddy, light-blue, blue- 
grey, mauve, purple, violet, and pale-green are the Protean 
tints ; often mixed and mottled, the effect of alum, 
sulphuric acid, and the decomposition of bisulphide of 
iron. The saucer of the Great Geysir is lined with 
Geysirite (silica hydrate), beads or tubercles of grey-white 
silica ; all the others want these fungi or coral-like orna- 
ments. The dead and dying springs show only age-rusty 
moulds and broken-down piles, once chimneys and ovens, 
resembling those of Reykir, now degraded and deformed to 
countless heaps of light and dark grey. Like most of the 
modern features, they drained to the cold rivulet on the 
east, and eventually to the south. The most interesting 
feature is the Blesi (pronounced Blese), which lies 160 feet 



GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND 27 1 

north of the Great Geysir. This hot-water pond, a Grotto 
Azurra, where cooking is mostly done, lies on a mound, 
and runs in various directions. To the north it forms a 
dwarf river-valley flowing west of the Great Geysir; east- 
ward it feeds a hole of bubbling water which trickles in a 
streak of white sinter to the eastern rivulet and a drip- 
hole, apparently communicating underground with an ugly 
little boiler of grey-brown, scum-streaked, bubbling mud, 
foul-looking as a drain. The " beautiful quiescient spring " 
measures forty feet by fifteen, 1 and is of reniform or insect 
shape, the waist being represented by a natural arch of stone 
spanning the hot blue depths below the stony ledges which 
edge them with scallops and corrugations. Hence the 
name ; this bridge is the " blaze " streaking a pony's face. 
Blesi was not sealed by deposition of silex; it suddenly 
ceased to erupt in a. d., 1784, the year after the Skaptar 
convulsion, a fact which suggests the origin of the Geysirs. 
It is Mackenzie's " cave of blue water " ; and travellers 
who have not enjoyed the lapis lazuli of the Capri grotto, 
indulge in raptures about its colouration. North-west of 
the Blesi, and distant 200 feet, is another ruin, situated on 
a much higher plane and showing the remains of a large 
silicious mould: it steams, but the breath of life comes 
feebly and irregularly. This is probably the u Roaring 
Geysir " or the " Old Geysir," which maps and plans 
place eighty yards from the Great Geysir. 

1 More exactly the two divisions are each about twenty feet long ; the 
smaller is twelve and the greater is eighteen feet broad; the extreme 
depth is thirty feet. 



272 GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND 

The Great Geysir was unpropitious to us, yet we 
worked hard to see one of its expiring efforts. An Eng- 
lishman had set up a pyramid at the edge of the saucer, 
and we threw in several hundredweights, hoping that the 
silex, acted upon by the excessive heat, might take the 
effect of turf; the only effects were a borborygmus which 
sounded somewhat like B'rr'rr't, and a shiver as if the 
Foul Fiend had stirred the depths. The last eruption was 
described to us as only a large segment of the tube, not 
exceeding six feet in diameter. About midnight the 
veteran suffered slightly from singultus. On Monday the 
experts mispredicted that he would exhibit between 8 
and 9 a. m., and at 1 a. m. on Tuesday there was a 
trace of second-childhood life. After the usual eructation, 
a general bubble, half veiled in white vapour, rose like a 
gigantic glass-shade from the still surface, and the troubled 
water trickled down the basin sides in miniature boiling 
cascades. There it flowed eastwards by a single waste- 
channel which presently forms a delta of two arms, the 
base being the cold, rapid, and brawling rivulet ; the 
northern fork has a dwarf " force," used as a douche, and 
the southern exceeds it in length, measuring some 350 
paces. 

We were more fortunate with the irascible Strokkr, 
whose name has been generally misinterpreted. Dillon 
calls it the piston, or " churning-staff" ; and Barrow the 
" shaker " : it is simply the " hand-churn " whose upright 
shaft is worked up and down — the churn-like column of 
water suggested the resemblance. This feature, perhaps 



GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND 273 

the " New Geysir " of Sir John Stanley and Henderson, 
formerly erupted naturally, and had all the amiable eccen- 
tricity of youth : now it must be teased or coaxed. 
Stanley gave it 130 feet of jet, or 36 higher than the 
Great Geysir; Henderson 50 to 80; Symington, 100 to 
150 feet; Bryson, "upwards of a hundred "; and Baring- 
Gould, " rather higher than the Geysir." We found it 
lying 275 feet (Mackenzie 131 yards) south of the big 
brother, of which it is a mean replica. The outer diameter 
of the saucer is only seven feet, the inner about eighteen ; 
and it is too well drained by its silex-floored channel ever 
to remain full. 

The most interesting part to us was the fourth or south- 
ern tract. It is known as the Thikku-hverar, thick 
caldrous (hot springs), perhaps in the sense opposed to thin 
or clear water. Amongst its " eruptiones flatuum," the 
traveller feels that he is walking 

" Per ignes 
Suppositos cineri doloso." 

There are at least fifty items in operation over this big 
lime-kiln; some without drains, others shedding either by 
sinter-crusted channels eastward or westward through turf 
and humus to the swampy stream. It shows an im- 
mense variety, from the infantine puff to the cold turf- 
puddle ; from Jack-in-the-box to the cave of blue-green 
water; surrounded by ledges of silex and opaline sinter 
(hydrate of silica), more or less broad : the infernal concert 
of flip-flopping, spluttering, welling, fizzing, grunting, 



274 GREAT GEYSIR OF ICELAND 

rumbling, and growling never ceases. The prevalent tints 
are green and white, but livelier hues are not wanting. 
One " gusherling " discharges red water ; and there is a 
spring which spouts, like an escape pipe, brown, high and 
strong. The " Little Geysir," which Mackenzie places 
1 06 yards south of the Strokkr, and which has been very 
churlish of late years, was once seen to throw up ten to 
twelve feet of clean water, like the jet of a fire-play. 
The " Little Strokkr of older travellers, a wonderfully 
amusing formation, which darts its waters in numerous 
diagonal columns every quarter of an hour," is a stufa or 
steam-jet in the centre of the group, but it has long ceased 
its " funning." 

Ultima Thule ; or, a Summer in Iceland (London and 
Edinburgh, 1875). 



THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 

WILLIAM BEATTIE 

A SHORT way below Grein commences the rapid 
called " Greiner-schwall," where the river, sud- 
denly contracting its channel, and walled in by rugged 
precipices, assumes a new aspect of foam and agitation; 
while the roar of its downward course breaks deeper and 
harsher on the ear. This rugged defile is the immediate 
inlet to the Strudel and Wirbel — the Scylla and Charybdis 
of the Danube. This is by far the most interesting and 
remarkable region of the Danube. It is the fertile theme 
of many legends and traditions ; and in pages of history 
and romance affords ample scope for marvellous incidents 
and striking details. Not a villager but can relate a hun- 
dred instances of disasters incurred, and dangers overcome, 
in this perilous navigation — of lives sacrificed and cargoes 
sunk while endeavouring to weather the three grand 
enemies of the passage — whirlpools, rocks, and robbers. 
But, independently of these local traditions, and the difficul- 
ties and dangers of the strait — the natural scenery which 
here arrests the eye is highly picturesque, and even sub- 
lime. It is the admiration of all voyagers on the Upper 
Danube, and keeps a firm hold of the memory long after 
other scenes and impressions have worn off. Between 



276 THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 

Ulm and the confines of the Ottoman Empire, there is 
only one other scene calculated to make anything like so 
forcible an impression on the tourist ; and that is near the 
cataracts of the Iron Gate — a name familiar to every Ger- 
man reader. 

After descending the Greiner-schwall, or rapids of the 
Grein above mentioned, the river rolls on for a con- 
siderable space, in a deep and almost tranquil volume, 
which, by contrast with the approaching turmoil, gives in- 
creased effect to its wild, stormy, and romantic features. 
At first, a hollow, subdued roar, like that of distant thunder 
strikes the ear and rouses the traveller's attention. This 
increases every second, and the stir and activity which now 
prevail among the hands on board shows that additional 
force, vigilance, and caution are to be employed in the use 
of helm and oars. The water is now changed in its colour 
— chafed into foam, and agitated like a seething cauldron. 
In front, and in the centre of the channel, rises an abrupt, 
isolated, and colossal rock, fringed with wood, and crested 
with a mouldering tower, on the summit of which is 
planted a lofty cross, to which, in the moment of danger, 
the ancient boatmen were wont to address their prayers for 
deliverance. The first sight of this used to create no little 
excitement and apprehension on board ; the master ordered 
strict silence to be observed — the steersman grasped the 
helm with a firm hand, — the passengers moved aside — so 
as to leave free space for the boatmen, while the women 
and children were hurried into the cabin, there to await, 
with feelings of no little anxiety, the result of the enter- 



THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 277 

prise. Every boatman, with his head uncovered, muttered 
a prayer to his favourite saint; and away dashed the barge 
through the tumbling breakers, that seemed as if hurrying it 
on to inevitable destruction. All these preparations, joined 
by the wildness of the adjacent scenery, the terrific aspect 
of the rocks, and the tempestuous state of the water, were 
sufficient to produce a powerful sensation on the minds even 
of those who had been all their lives familiar with dangers ; 
while the shadowy phantoms with which superstition had 
peopled it, threw a deeper gloom over the whole scene. 

Now, however, these ceremonies are only cold and 
formal ; for the danger being removed, the invocation of 
guardian saints has become less fervent, and the cross on 
the Worther Isle, we fear, is often passed with little more 
than the common sign of obeisance. 

Within the last fifty years the rocks in the bed of the 
river have been blasted, and the former obstruction so 
greatly diminished, that in the present day, the Strudel and 
Wirbel present no other dangers than what may be caused 
by the ignorance or negligence of boatmen ; so that the 
tourist may contemplate the scene without alarm, and en- 
joy, in all its native grandeur, the picture here offered to 
his eye and imagination — 

Frowning o'er the weltering flood, 
Castled rock and waving wood, 
Monkish cell and robbers' hold — 
Rugged as in days of old, 
From precipices, stern and grey, 
Guard the dark and dreaded way. 

The tourist who has happily escaped the perils of the 



278 THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 

Strudel rapids, has still to encounter, in his descent, the 
whirlpool of the Wirbel, which is distant from the former 
little more than five hundred fathoms. Between the two 
perils of this passage in the Danube there is a remarkable 
similarity — magna componere parvis — with that of the Faro 
of Messina ; where the hereditary terrors of Scylla and 
Charybdis still intimidate the pilot, as he struggles to main- 
tain a clear course through the strait : 

" There, in foaming whirls Charybdis curls, 
Loud Scylla roars to larboard ; 
In that howling gulf, with the dog and wolf, 
Deep moored to-night, with her living freight, 
That goodly ship is harboured! " 

The cause of the whirlpool is evident at first sight. In 
the centre of the stream is an island called the Hansstein, 
about a hundred and fifty yards long, by fifty in breadth, 
consisting of primitive rock, and dividing the river — which 
at this point descends with tremendous force — into the two 
separate channels of the Hossgang and the Strudel already 
mentioned. In its progress to this point, it meets with that 
portion of the river which runs smoothly along the north- 
ern shore, and breaking it into a thousand eddies, forms the 
Wirbel. This has the appearance of a series of foaming 
circles, each deepening as it approaches the centre, and 
caused by the two opposite streams rushing violently 
against each other. That such is the real cause of the 
Wirbel is sufficiently proved by the fact, that, in the great 
autumnal inundation of 1787, when the flood ran so high 
as to cover the Hansstein, the Wirbel, to the astonishment 



THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 279 

of the oldest boatmen and natives of the country, had en- 
tirely disappeared. For the obstacle being thus counter- 
acted by the depth of the flood, and the stream being now- 
unbroken by the rock, rushed down in one continuous 
volume, without exhibiting any of those gyratory motions 
which characterize the Wirbel. 

The sombre and mysterious aspects of the place, its wild 
scenery, and the frequent accidents which occurred in the 
passage, invested it with awe and terror; but above all, the 
superstitions of the time, a belief in the marvellous, and the 
credulity of the boatmen, made the navigation of the 
Strudel and the Wirbel a theme of the wildest romance. 
At night, sounds that were heard far above the roar of the 
Danube, issued from every ruin. Magical lights flashed 
through their loop-holes and casements — festivals were held 
in the long-deserted halls — maskers glided from room to 
room — the waltzers maddened to the strains of an infernal 
orchestra — armed sentinels paraded the battlements, while 
at intervals the clash of arms, the neighing of steeds, and 
the shrieks of unearthly combatants smote fitfully on the 
boatman's ear. But the tower in which these scenes were 
most fearfully enacted was that on the Longstone, com- 
monly called the " Devil's Tower," as it well deserved to 
be — for here, in close communion with his master, resided 
the " Black Monk," whose office it was to exhibit false 
lights and landmarks along the gulf, so as to decoy the 
vessels into the whirlpool, or dash them against the rocks. 

Returning to Orsova, we re-embarked in boats provided 
by the Navigation Company, and proceeded to encounter 



280 THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 

the perils of the Eisen Thor — the Iron Gate of the Danube 
■ — which is so apt to be associated in the stranger's imagina- 
tion with something of real personal risk and adventure. 
The " Iron Gate" we conjecture, is some narrow, dark 
and gloomy defile, through which the water, hemmed in by 
stupendous cliffs, and " iron-bound," as we say, foams and 
bellows, and dashes over a channel of rocks, every one of 
which, when it cannot drag you into its own whirlpool, is 
sure to drive you upon some of its neighbours, which, with 
another rude shove, that makes your bark stagger and reel, 
sends you smack upon a third! "But the 'gate'?" 
" Why the gate is nothing more or less than other gates, 
the ' outlet ' ; and I dare say we shall be very glad when we, 
are ' let out quietly.' " " Very narrow at that point, 
s'pose ? " "Very. You have seen an iron gate ? " "To 
be sure I have." " Well, I'm glad of that, because you 
can more readily imagine what the Iron Gate of the 
Danube is." " Yes, and I am all impatience to see it ; but 
what if it should be locked when we arrive? " "Why, in 
that case, we should feel a little awkward." " Should we 
have to wait long ? " " Only till we got the key, although 
we might have to send to Constantinople for it." " Con- 
stantinople ! well, here's a pretty situation ! I wish I had 
gone by the ' cart.' " " You certainly had your choice, 
and might have done so — the Company provide both 
waggon and water conveyance to Gladova ; but I dare say 
we shall find the gate open." " I hope we shall ; and as 
for the rocks and all that, why we got over the Wirbel and 
Strudel and Izlay and twenty others, and s'pose we get over 



THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 251 

this too. It's only the gate that puzzles me — the Hand- 
book says not a word about that — quite unpardonable such 
an omission ! Write to the publisher." 

By this time we were ready to shoot the rapids; and 
certainly, at first appearance, the enterprise was by no 
means inviting. The water, however, was in good volume 
at the time ; and although chafed and fretted by a thousand 
cross, curling eddies, which tossed their crests angrily 
against our bark, we kept our course with tolerable steadi- 
ness to the left, and without apparent danger, unless it 
might have arisen from sheer ignorance or want of precau- 
tion. More towards the centre of the channel there would 
certainly have been some risk ; for there the river is tor- 
tured and split into numberless small threads of foam, by 
the rocky spikes which line the channel, and literally tear 
the water into shreds, as it sweeps rapidly over them — and 
these, more than the declivity itself, are what present a 
more formidable appearance in the descent. But when the 
river is full, they are not much observed, although well- 
known by their effects in the cross-eddies, through which, 
from the channel for boats being always intricate and ir- 
regular, it demands more caution and experience to steer. 
The entire length of these rapids is rather more than 
seventeen hundred yards, with a perpendicular fall of 
nearly one yard in every three hundred, and a velocity of 
from three to five yards in every second. Boats, neverthe- 
less, are seen from time to time, slowly ascending, close 
under the left bank of the river, dragged by teams of oxen. 
" But the Iron Gate ? " said an anxious voice, again ad- 



282 THE RAPIDS OF THE DANUBE 

dressing his fellow-tourist. " I see nothing like a gate — 
but of course we have to pass the gorge first ? " " We 
have passed both," said his friend, " and here is Gladova." 
" Passed both ! ' Tell that to the marines ! ' I know a 
gorge when I see it, and a gate when I see it ; but as yet 
we've passed neither." " Why, there they are," reiterated 
the other, pointing to the stern ; " those white, frothing 
eddies you see dancing in the distance — those are the 
' Iron-Gate ! ' and very luckily we found the ' key.' " 1 
The inquirer now joined heartily in the laugh, and taking 
another view of the " Gate " we glided smoothly down 
to the little straggling, thatch-clad village of Gladova. 
The Danube (London, 1844). 

1 At the Iron Gate the Danube quits the Austrian Dominions and 
enters those of Turkey. The country on the south continues for some 
time mountainous, then hilly, and by degrees sinks into a plain : on the 
north is the great level of Wallachia. In its course towards the Black 
Sea, the Danube divides, frequently forming numerous islands, especially 
below Silistria. Its width where undivided now averages from fifteen 
hundred to two thousand yards, its depth above twenty feet. Before 
reaching its mouth, several large rivers flow into it, as the Alt, Sereth, 
and Pruth. On its junction with the last-mentioned river it divides into 
several branches, which do not again unite, and it at last terminates its 
long course by issuing through seven several mouths into the Black Sea. 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE 

BAYARD TAYLOR 

THERE was no outbreathing from the regions below 
as we stood at the entrance to the cave, the upper 
atmosphere having precisely the same temperature. We 
advanced in single file down the Main Avenue, which, from 
the increased number of lamps, showed with greater dis- 
tinctness than on our first trip. Without pausing at any 
of the objects of interest on the road, we marched to the 
Giant's Coffin, crawled through the hole behind it, passed 
the Deserted Chambers, and reached the Bottomless Pit, the 
limit of our journey in this direction the previous day. 

Beyond the Pit we entered upon new ground. After 
passing from under its Moorish dome the ceiling became 
low and the path sinuous and rough. I could only walk by 
stooping considerably, and it is necessary to keep a sharp 
look-out to avoid striking your head against the transverse 
iambs of rock. This passage is aptly called the Valley of 
Humiliation. It branches off to the right into another pas- 
sage called Pensico Avenue, which contains some curious 
stalactitic formations, similar to the Gothic Gallery. We 
did not explore it, but turned to the left and entered an ex- 
tremely narrow, winding passage, which meanders through 
the solid rock. It is called Fat Man's Misery, and any one 



284 THE MAMMOTH CAVE 

whose body is more than eighteen inches in breadth will 
have trouble to get through. The largest man who ever 
passed it weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, and any 
gentleman weighing more than that must leave the best 
part of the cave unexplored. None of us came within the 
scope of prohibition (Nature, it seems, is opposed to corpu- 
lence), and after five minutes' twisting we emerged into a 
spacious hall called the Great Relief. Its continuation 
forms an avenue which leads to Bandits' Hall — a wild, 
rugged vault, the bottom of which is heaped with huge 
rocks that have fallen from above. All this part of the 
cave is rich in striking and picturesque effects, and presents 
a more rude and irregular character than anything we had 
yet seen. 

At the end of Bandits' Hall is the Meat-Room, where a 
fine collection of limestone hams and shoulders are sus- 
pended from the ceiling, as in a smoke-house, the resem- 
blance, which is really curious, is entirely owing to the' action 
of the water. The air now grew perceptibly damp, and a few 
more steps brought us to the entrance of River Hall. Here 
the ceiling not only becomes loftier, but the floor gradually 
slopes away before you, and you look down into the vast 
depths and uncertain darkness, and question yourself if the 
Grecian fable be not indeed true. While I paused on the 
brink of these fresh mysteries the others of the party had 
gone ahead under the charge of Mat j Stephen, who re- 
mained with me, proposed that we should descend to the 
banks of the Styx and see them crossing the river upon the 
Natural Bridge. We stood on the brink of the black, 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE 285 

silent water ; the arch of the portal was scarcely visible in 
the obscurity far above us. Now, as far below, I saw the 
twinkle of a distant lamp, then another and another. " Is it 
possible," I asked, " that they have descended so much 
further ? " " You forget," said Stephen, " that you are 
looking into the river and see their reflected images. Stoop 
a little and you will find that they are high above the 
water." I stooped and looked under an arch, and saw the 
slow procession of golden points of light passing over the 
gulf under the eaves of a great cliff"; but another procession 
quite as distinct passed on below until the last lamp disap- 
peared and all was darkness again. 

Five minutes more and the roughest and most slippery 
scrambling brought us to the banks of the Lethe River, 
where we found the rest of the party. 

The river had risen since the previous day, and was at the 
most inconvenient stage possible. A part of the River 
Walk was overflowed, yet not deep enough to float the 
boats. Mat waded out and turned the craft, which was 
moored to a projecting rock, as near to us as the water 
would allow, after which he and Stephen carried us one by 
one upon their shoulders and deposited us in it. It was a 
rude, square scow, well plastered with river mud. Boards 
were laid across for the ladies, the rest of us took our seats 
on the muddy gunwales, the guides plied their paddles, and 
we were afloat on Lethe. 

After a ferriage of about one hundred yards, we landed 
on a bank of soft mud besides a small arm of the river, 
which had overflowed the usual path. We sank to our 



286 THE MAMMOTH CAVE 

ankles in the moist, tenacious soil, floundering laboriously 
along until we were brought to a halt by Echo River, the 
third and last stream. This again is divided into three or 
four arms, which, meandering away under low arches, 
finally unite. 

As we stood on the wet rocks, peering down into the 
black translucence of the silent, mysterious water, sounds — 
first distant, then near, then distant again — stole to us from 
under the groined vaults of rock. First, the dip of many 
oars ; then a dull, muffled peal, rumbling away like the 
echoes of thunder; then a voice marvellously sweet, but 
presently joined by others sweeter still, taking up the dying 
notes ere they faded into silence, and prolonging them 
through remoter chambers. The full, mellow strains rose 
until they seemed sung at our very ears, then relapsed like 
ebbing waves, to wander off" into solitary halls, then ap- 
proached again, and receded, like lost spirits seeking here 
and there for an outlet from the world of darkness. Or 
was it a chorus of angels come on some errand of pity and 
mercy to visit the Stygian shores ? As the heavenly har- 
monies thickened, we saw a gleam on the water, and pres- 
ently a clear light, floating above its mirrored counterfeit, 
swept into sight. It was no angel, but Stephen, whose 
single voice had been multiplied into that enchanting chorus. 

The whole party embarked in two small boats, and after 
a last voyage of about two hundred yards, were landed be- 
yond the waters, and free to explore the wonderful avenues 
of that new world of which Stephen is the Columbus. 
The River Hall here terminates, and the passages are 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE 287 

broken and irregular for a short distance. A few minutes 
of rough travel brought us to a large circular hall with a 
vaulted ceiling, from the centre of which poured a cascade 
of crystal water, striking upon the slant side of a large re- 
clining boulder, and finally disappearing through a funnel- 
shaped pit in the floor. It sparkled like a shower of pearls 
in the light of our lamps, as we clustered around the brink 
of the pit to drink from the stores gathered in those natural 
bowls which seem to have been hollowed out for the uses 
of the invisible gnomes. 

Beyond Cascade Hall commences Silliman's Avenue, a 
passage about twenty feet wide, forty or fifty in height, and 
a mile and a half in length. 

Our lamps were replenished and we entered El Ghor, 
which is by far the most picturesque avenue in the cave. 
It is a narrow, lofty passage meandering through the heart 
of a mass of horizontal strata of limestone, the broken 
edges of which assume the most remarkable forms. Now 
there are rows of broad, flat shelves overhanging your 
head ; now you sweep around the stern of some mighty 
vessel with its rudder set hard to starboard ; now you enter 
a little vestibule with friezes and mouldings of almost Doric 
symmetry and simplicity; and now you wind away into a 
Cretan labyrinth most uncouth and fantastic, whereof the 
Minotaur would be a proper inhabitant. It is a continual 
succession of surprises, and, to the appreciative visitor, of 
raptures. The pass is somewhat more than a mile and a 
half'm length, and terminates in a curious knot or entangle- 
ment of passages leading to two or more tiers of avenues. 



28 b THE MAMMOTH CAVE 

We were now, according to Stephen's promises, on the 
threshold of wonders. Before proceeding further we 
stopped to drink from a fine sulphur spring which fills a 
natural basin in the bottom of a niche made on purpose 
to contain it. We then climbed a perpendicular ladder, 
passing through a hole in the ceiling barely large enough to 
admit our bodies, and found ourselves at the entrance of a 
narrow, lofty passage leading upwards. When all had 
made the ascent the guides exultingly lifted their lamps and 
directed our eyes to the rocks overhanging the aperture ; 
there was the first wonder, truly ! Clusters of grapes 
gleaming with blue and violet tints through the water which 
trickled over them, hung from the cliffs, while a stout vine, 
springing from the base and climbing nearly to the top, 
seemed to support them. Hundreds on hundreds of 
bunches clustering so thickly as to conceal the leaves, hang 
forever ripe and forever unplucked in that marvellous vint- 
age of the subterranean world. For whose hand shall 
squeeze the black, infernal wine from grapes that grow be- 
yond Lethe ? 

Mounting for a short distance, this new avenue suddenly 
turned to the left, widened, and became level ; the ceiling 
is low, but beautifully vaulted, and Washington's Hall, 
which we soon reached, is circular, and upwards of a hun- 
dred feet in diameter. This is the usual dining-room of 
parties who go beyond the rivers. Nearly five hours had 
now elapsed since we entered the cave, and five hours spent 
in that bracing, stimulating atmosphere might well justify 
the longing glances which we cast upon the baskets carried 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE 289 

by the guides. Mr. Miller had foreseen our appetites, and 
there were stores of venison, biscuit, ham, and pastry, more 
than sufficient for all. We made our midday, or rather 
midnight meal sitting, like the nymph who wrought Ex- 
calibur 

" Upon the hidden bases of the hills," 

buried far below the green Kentucky forests, far below the 
forgotten sunshine. For in the cave you forget that there 
is an outer world somewhere above you. The hours have 
no meaning : Time ceases to be ; no thought of labour, 
no sense of responsibility, no twinge of conscience intrudes 
to suggest the existence you have left. You walk in some 
limbo beyond the confines of actual life, yet no nearer the 
world of spirits. For my part, I could not shake off the 
impression that I was wandering on the outside of Uranus 
or Neptune, or some planet still more deeply buried in the 
frontier darkness of our solar system. 

Washington Hall marks the commencement of Elindo 
Avenue, a straight hall about sixty feet wide, twenty in 
height, and two miles long. It is completely encrusted from 
end to end with crystallizations of gypsum, white as snow. 
This is the crowning marvel of the cave, the pride and the 
boast of the guides. Their satisfaction is no less than 
yours, as they lead you through the diamond grottoes, the 
gardens of sparry efflorescence, and the gleaming vaults of 
this magical avenue. We first entered the " Snow-ball 
Room," where the gnome-children in their sports have 
peppered the grey walls and ceiling with thousands of snow- 



290 THE MAMMOTH CAVE 

white projecting discs, so perfect in their fragile beauty, 
that they seem ready to melt away under the blaze of your 
lamp. Then commences Cleveland's Cabinet, a gallery of 
crystals, the richness and variety of which bewilder you. 
It is a subterranean conservatory, filled with the flowers of 
all the zones ; for there are few blossoms expanding on the 
upper earth but are mimicked in these gardens of Darkness. 
I cannot lead you from niche to niche, and from room to 
room, examining in detail the enchanted growths ; they are 
all so rich and so wonderful that the memory does not at- 
tempt to retain them. Sometimes the hard limestone rock 
is changed into a pasture of white roses ; sometimes it is 
starred with opening daisies; the sunflowers spread their 
flat discs and rayed leaves ; the feathery chalices of the 
cactus hang from the clefts ; the night-blooming cereus 
opens securely her snowy cup, for the morning never comes 
to close it; the tulip is here a virgin, and knows not that 
her sisters above are clothed in the scarlet of shame. 

In many places the ceiling is covered with a mammary 
crystallization, as if a myriad bubbles were rising beneath its 
glittering surface. Even on this jewelled soil which 
sparkles all around you, grow the lilies and roses, singly 
overhead, but clustering together towards the base of the 
vault, where they give place to long, snowy, pendulous 
cactus-flowers, which droop like a fringe around diamonded 
niches. Here you see the passion-flower, with its curiously 
curved pistils ; there an iris with its lanceolate leaves ; and 
again, bunches of celery with stalks white and tender 
enough for a fairy's dinner. There are occasional patches 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE 20,1 

of gypsum, tinged of a deep amber colour by the presence 
of iron. Through the whole length of the avenue there is 
no cessation of the wondrous work. The pale rock- 
blooms burst forth everywhere, crowding on each other 
until the brittle sprays cannot bear their weight, and they 
fall to the floor. The slow, silent efflorescence still goes 
on, as it has done for ages in that buried tropic. 

What mostly struck me in my underground travels was 
the evidence of design which I found everywhere. Why 
should the forms of the earth's outer crust, her flowers and 
fruits, the very heaven itself which spans her, be so won- 
derfully reproduced ? What laws shape the blossoms and 
the foliage of that vast crystalline garden ? There seemed 
to be something more than the accidental combinations of 
a blind chance in what I saw — some evidence of an in- 
forming and directing Will. In the secret caverns, the 
agencies which produced their wonders have been at work 
for thousands of years, perhaps thousands of ages, fashion- 
ing the sparry splendours in the womb of darkness with as 
exquisite a grace, as true an instinct of beauty as in the 
palm or the lily, which are moulded by the hands of the 
sun. What power is it which lies behind the mere 
chemistry of Nature, impregnating her atoms with such 
subtle laws of symmetry ? What but Divine Will, which 
first gave her being, and which is never weary of multi- 
plying for man the lessons of His infinite wisdom ? 

At the end of Elindo Avenue the floor sinks, then as- 
cends, and is at last blocked up by a huge pile of large, 
loose rocks. When we had reached the foot, the roof of 



292 THE MAMMOTH CAVE 

the avenue suddenly lifted and expanded, and the summit 
of the Rocky Mountains, as they are called, leaned against 
a void waste of darkness. We climbed to the summit, 
about a hundred feet above, whence we looked down into 
an awful gulf, spanned far above our heads by a hollow 
dome of rock. The form of this gigantic hall was nearly 
elliptical. It was probably 150 feet in height, by 500 in 
length, the ends terminating near the roof in the cavernous 
mouths of other avenues. The guides partly descended 
the hill and there kindled a brilliant Bengal light, which 
disclosed more clearly the form of the hall, but I thought it 
more impressive as its stupendous proportions were first 
dimly revealed by the light of our lamps. Stephen, who 
discovered this place, gave it the name of the Dismal 
Hollow. 

Scrambling along the ridge of the Rocky Mountains, we 
gained the entrance to the cavern opening on the left, 
which we followed for about two hundred yards, when it 
terminated in a lofty circular dome, called Crogan's Hall. 
The floor on one side dropped suddenly into a deep pit, 
around which were several cushions of stalagmite, answer- 
ing to short stalactites, hanging from the ceiling far above. 
At the extremity of the hall was a sort of recess, formed 
by stalactitic pillars. The wall behind it was a mass of 
veined alabaster. " Here," said Stephen, " is your Ultima 
Thule. This is the end of the Mammoth Cave, nine 
miles from daylight." But I doubt whether there is really 
an end of the cave any more than an end of the earth. 
Notwithstanding the ground we had traversed, we had left 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE 293 

many vast avenues unexplored, and a careful search would 
no doubt lead to further discoveries. 

We retraced our steps slowly along Elindo Avenue, 
stopping every few minutes to take a last look at the 
bowers of fairy blossoms. After reaching Washington's 
Hall we noticed that the air was no longer still, but was 
flowing fresh and cool in our faces. Stephen observed it 
also, and said : " There has been a heavy rain outside. " 
Entering the pass of El Ghor again at Martha's Vineyard, 
we walked rapidly forward, without making a halt, to its 
termination at Silliman's Avenue. The distance is 
reckoned by the guides at a little more than a mile and a 
half, and we were just forty minutes in walking it. We 
several times felt fatigue, especially when passing the 
rougher parts of the cave, but the sensation always passed 
away in some unaccountable manner, leaving us fresh and 
buoyant. The crossing of the rivers was accomplished 
with some labour, but without accident. I accompanied 
Stephen on his return through the second arch of Echo 
River. As I sat alone in the silent, transparent darkness 
of the mysterious stream, I could hear the tones of my 
boatman's voice gliding down the caverns like a wave, 
flowing more and more faintly until its vibrations were too 
weak to move the ear. Thus, as he sang, there were fre- 
quently three or four notes, each distinctly audible, floating 
away at different degrees of remoteness. At the last arch 
there was only a space of eighteen inches between the 
water and the rock. We lay down on our backs in the 
muddy bottom of the boat, and squeezed through to the 



294 THE MAMMOTH CAVE 

middle branch of Echo River, where we found the rest of 
the party, who had gone round through Purgatory. 

After again threading Fat Man's Misery, passing the 
Bottomless Pit and the Deserted Chambers, we at last 
emerged into the Main Avenue at the Giant's Coffin. It 
was six o'clock, and we had been ten hours in the cave. 

When we heard the tinkling drops of the little cascade 
over the entrance, I looked up and saw a patch of deep, 
tender blue set in the darkness. In the midst of it 
twinkled a white star — whiter and more dazzling than any 
star I ever saw before. I paused and drank at the trough 
under the waterfall, for, like the Fountain of Trevi at 
Rome, it may be that those who drink there shall return 
again. When we ascended to the level of the upper world 
we found that a fierce tornado had passed along during the 
day ; trees had been torn up by the roots and hurled down 
in all directions ; stunning thunders had jarred the air, and 
the wet earth was fairly paved with leaves cut off* by the 
heavy hail — yet we, buried in the heart of the hills, had 
heard no sound, nor felt the slightest tremour in the air. 

The stars were all in their places as I walked back to 
the hotel. I had been twelve hours under ground, in 
which I had walked about twenty-four miles. I had lost a 
day — a day with its joyous morning, its fervid noon, its 
tempest, and its angry sunset of crimson and gold ; but I 
had gained an age in a strange and hitherto unknown world 
— an age of wonderful experience, and an exhaustless store 
of sublime and lovely memories. 

At Home and Abroad (New York, 1864). 



STROMBOLI 

ALEXANDRE DUMAS 

AS we advanced, Stromboli became more and more 
distinct every moment, and through the clear 
evening air we could perceive every detail; this mountain is 
formed exactly like a hay-mow, its summit being sur- 
mounted by a peakj it is from this summit that the smoke 
escapes, and, at intervals of a quarter of an hour, a flame ; 
during the daytime this flame does not apparently exist, 
being lost in the light of the sun ; but when evening 
comes, and the Orient begins to darken, this flame be- 
comes visible and you can see it dart forth from the 
midst of the smoke which it colours, and fall again in jets 
of lava. 

Towards seven o'clock we reached Stromboli ; unfortu- 
nately the port is in the east, and we came from the west ; 
so that we had to coast along the whole length of the island 
where the lava descended down a sharp slope into the sea. 
For a breadth of twenty paces at its summit and a hundred 
and fifty at its base, the mountain at this point is covered 
with cinders and all vegetation is burned. 

The captain was correct in his predictions : we arrived 
half an hour after the port had been closed ; all we could 
say to make them open to us was lost eloquence. 



296 STROMBOLI 

However, the entire population of Stromboli had run to 
the shore. Our Speronare was a frequent visitor to this 
harbour and our sailors were well known in the island. 
It was in Stromboli that tEoIus held bound the 
luctantes 'ventos tempestatesque sonoras. Without doubt, at 
the time of the song of .^Eneas, and when Stromboli was 
called Strongyle, the island was not known for what it 
really is, and hid within its depths the boiling masses and 
periodical ejaculations which make this volcano the most 
obliging one in the world. In sooth, you know what to 
expect from Stromboli : it is not like Vesuvius or Etna, 
which make the traveller wait sometimes three, five or 
even ten years for a poor little eruption. I have been told 
that this is doubtless owing to the position they hold in the 
hierarchy of fire-vomiting mountains, a hierarchy that per- 
mits them to be aristocratic at their own pleasure : this is 
true enough ; and we must not take it amiss if Stromboli 
allows her social position to be assailed an instant, and to 
have understood that it is only a little toy volcano to which 
one would not pay the slightest attention if it made itself so 
ridiculous as to put on airs. 

Moreover, it did not keep us waiting. After scarcely 
five minutes' expectation, a heavy rumbling was heard, a 
detonation resembling twenty cannon fired in succession, 
and a long jet of flame leaped into the air and fell again in 
a shower of lava; a part of this shower fell again into the 
crater of the volcano, while the other, rolling down the 
slope hurried like a brooklet of flame to extinguish itself, 
hissing, into the sea. Ten minutes later the same phenom- 



STROMBOLI 297 

enon was repeated, and at every succeeding ten minutes 
throughout the night. 

I admit that this was one of the most curious nights I 
ever spent in my life ; neither Jadin nor I could tear our- 
selves away from this terrible and magnificent spectacle. 
There were such detonations that the very atmosphere 
seemed excited, and you imagined the whole island trem- 
bling like a frightened child ; it was only Milord that these 
fire -works put into a state of exaltation impossible to de- 
scribe; he wanted to jump into the water every moment to 
devour the burning lava which sometimes fell ten feet 
from us, like a meteor precipitating itself into the sea. 

As for our boatswain, he was so accustomed to this 
spectacle, that, after asking if we needed anything and upon 
our reply in the negative, he retired between decks and 
neither the lightnings that illuminated the air nor the thun- 
ders that shook it had power to disturb his slumbers. 

We stayed here until two o'clock ; finally, overcome 
with fatigue and sleep, we decided to retire to our cabin. 
As for Milord, nothing would persuade him to do as we 
did and he stayed all night on deck, growling and barking 
at the volcano. 

We woke in the morning at the first movement of the 
Speronare. With the return of daylight the mountain lost 
all its fantastic appearance. 

We constantly heard the detonations ; but the flame had 
become invisible ; and that burning lava stream of the night 
was confused in the day with the reddish ashes over which 
, it rolls. 



298 STROMBOLI 

Ten minutes more and we were again in port. This 
time we had no difficulty in entering. Pietro and Giovanni 
got off with us; they wished to accompany us on our 
ascent. 

We entered, not an inn (there are none in Stromboli), 
but a house whose proprietors were related to our captain. 
As it would not have been prudent to have started on our 
way fasting, Giovanni asked permission of our hosts to 
make breakfast for us while Pietro went to hunt for guides, 
— a permission not only accorded to us with much grace 
but our host also went out and came back in a few mo- 
ments with the most beautiful grapes and figs that he could 
find. 

After we had finished our breakfast, Pietro arrived with 
two Stromboliotes who consented, in consideration of half a 
piastre each, to serve as guides. It was already nearly 
eight o'clock : to avoid a climb in the greatest heat of the 
day, we started off immediately. 

The top of Stromboli is only twelve or fifteen hundred 
feet above the level of the sea ; but its slope is so sharp 
that you cannot climb in a direct manner, but must zigzag 
eternally. At first, on leaving the village, the road was 
easy enough; it rose in the midst of those vines laden with 
grapes that make the commerce of the island and from 
which the fruit hangs in such great quantity that any one 
may help himself to all he wants without asking the per- 
mission of the owner; however, upon leaving the region of 
the vineyards, we found no more roads, and we had to walk 
at random, looking for the best ground and the easiest 



STROMBOLI 299 

slopes. Despite all these precautions, there came a moment 
when we were obliged to scramble on all fours : there was 
nothing to do but climb up ; but this place once passed, I 
vow that on turning around and seeing it, jutting almost 
perpendicularly over the sea, I asked in terror how we 
could ever descend ; our guides then said that we would 
come down by another road : that pacified me a little. 
Those who like myself are unhappy enough to have vertigo 
when they see a chasm below their feet will understand my 
question and still more the importance I attached to it. 

This break-neck spot passed, the ascent became easier 
for a quarter of an hour; but soon we came to a place 
which at the first glance seemed impassable ; it was a per- 
fectly sharp-pointed angle that formed the opening of the 
first volcano, and part of which was cut out perpendicularly 
upon the crater while the other fell with so sharp a slope to 
the sea that it seemed to me if I should fall perpendicularly 
on the other side I could not help rolling from top to bottom. 
Even Jadin, who ordinarily climbs like a chamois without 
ever troubling about the difficulties of the ground, stopped 
short when we came to this passage, asking if there was not 
some way to avoid it. As you may imagine, this was im- 
possible. 

The crater of Stromboli is formed like a vast funnel, 
from the bottom and the centre of which is an opening 
through which a man can enter a little way, and which 
communicates with the internal furnace of the mountain; 
it is through this opening, resembling the mouth of a canon, 
that the shower of projectiles darts forth, which, falling 



300 STROMBOLI 

again into the crater, sweeps with it down the inclined slope 
of stones the cinders and lava that, rolling to the bottom, 
block up that funnel. Then the volcano seems to gather 
its forces together for several minutes, compressed as it is 
by the stoppage of its valve ; but after a moment its smoke 
trembles like a breath ; you hear a deep roaring run 
through the hollow sides of the mountain ; then the can- 
nonade bursts forth again, throwing up two hundred feet 
above the summit new stones and new lava, which, falling 
back and closing the orifice of the passage anew, prepare 
for a new outburst. 

Seen from where we were, that is from top to bottom, 
this spectacle was superb and terrifying; at each internal 
convulsion that the mountain essayed, you felt it tremble 
beneath you, and it seemed as if it would burst asunder ; 
then came the explosion, similar to a gigantic tree of flame 
and smoke that shook its leaves of lava. 

Finally, we reached the extremity of this new lake of 
Sodom, and we found ourselves in an oasis of vines, pome- 
granates and olives. We had not the courage to go any 
farther. We lay down in the grass, and our guides brought 
us an armful of grapes and a hatful of figs. 

It was marvellous to us ; but there was not the smallest 
drop of water for our poor Milord to drink, and we per- 
ceived him devouring the skin of the figs and grapes. We 
gave him part of our repast, and for the first, and probably 
for the last, time in his life he dined off figs and grapes. 

I have often a desire to put myself in the place of Milord 
and write his memoirs as Hoffmann wrote those of his cat, 



STROMBOLI 301 

Murr. I am convinced that he must have had, seen from 
the canine point of view, (I beg the Academie's pardon for 
the expression) extremely new impressions of the people 
and countries that he has visited. 

A quarter of an hour after this halt we were in the vil- 
lage, writing upon our tablets this judicious observation — 
that the volcanoes follow but do not resemble each other : 
we were nearly frozen when ascending Etna, and we were 
nearly roasted when descending Stromboli. 

Jadin and I each extended a hand towards the mountain 
and swore that notwithstanding Vesuvius, Stromboli was 
the last volcano whose acquaintance we would make. 

Le Capttaine Arena: Impressions de Voyage (Paris, 1836). 



THE HIGH WOODS 

CHARLES KINGSLEY 

IN the primeval forest, looking upon that which my 
teachers and masters, Humboldt, Spix, Martius, 
Schomburgk, Waterton, Bates, Wallace, Gosse, and the 
rest, had looked already, with far wiser eyes than mine, 
comprehending somewhat at least of its wonders, while I could 
only stare in ignorance. There was actually, then, such a 
sight to be seen on earth ; and it was not less, but far more 
wonderful than they had said. 

My first feeling on entering the high woods was help- 
lessness, confusion, awe, all but terror. One is afraid at 
first to venture in fifty yards. Without a compass or the 
landmark of some opening to or from which he can look, a 
man must be lost in the first ten minutes, such a sameness 
is there in the infinite variety. That sameness and variety 
make it impossible to give any general sketch of a forest. 
Once inside, " you cannot see the woods for the trees." 
You can only wander on as far as you dare, letting each 
object impress itself on your mind as it may, and carrying 
away a confused recollection of innumerable perpendicular 
lines, all straining upwards, in fierce competition, towards 
the light-food far above ; and next on a green cloud, or 
rather mist, which hovers round your head, and rises, thick- 



THE HIGH WOODS 303 

ening and thickening to an unknown height. The upward 
lines are of every possible thickness, and of almost every 
possible hue ; what leaves they bear, being for most part on 
the tips of the twigs, give a scattered, mist-like appearance 
to the under-foliage. For the first moment, therefore, the 
forest seems more open than an English wood. But try to 
walk through it, and ten steps undeceive you. Around 
your knees are probably Mamures, with creeping stems and 
fan-shaped leaves, something like those of a young cocoa- 
nut palm. You try to brush among them, and are caught 
up instantly by a string or wire belonging to some other 
plant. You look up and round : and then you find that the 
air is full of wires — that you are hung up in a network of 
fine branches belonging to half-a-dozen different sorts of 
young trees, and intertwined with as many different species 
of slender creepers. You thought at your first glance 
among the tree-stems that you were looking through open 
air ; you find that you are looking through a labyrinth of 
wire-rigging, and must use the cutlass right and left at every 
five steps. You push on into a bed of strong sedge-like 
Sclerias, with cutting edges to their leaves. It is well for 
you if they are only three, and not six feet high. In the 
midst of them you run against a horizontal stick, triangular, 
rounded, smooth, green. You take a glance along it right 
and left, and see no end to it either way, but gradually dis- 
cover that it is the leaf-stalk of a young Cocorite palm. 
The leaf is five-and-twenty feet long, and springs from a 
huge ostrich plume, which is sprawling out of the ground 
and up above your head a few yards off. You cut the leaf- 



304 THE HIGH WOODS 

stalk through right and left, and walk on, to be stopped sud- 
denly (for you get so confused by the multitude of objects 
that you never see anything till you run against it) by a 
grey lichen-covered bar, as thick as your ankle. You fol- 
low it up with your eye, and find it entwine itself with 
three or four other bars, and roll over with them in great 
knots and festoons and loops twenty feet high, and then go 
up with them into the green cloud over your head, and van- 
ish, as if a giant had thrown a ship's cable into the tree-tops. 
One of them, so grand that its form strikes even the Negro 
and the Indian, is a Liantasse. You see that at once by the 
form of its cable — six or eight inches across in one direction, 
and three or four in another, furbelowed all down the mid- 
dle into regular knots, and looking like a chain cable be- 
tween two flexible iron bars. At another of the loops, 
about as thick as your arm, your companion, if you have a 
forester with you, will spring joyfully. With a few blows 
of his cutlass he will sever it as high up as he can reach, 
and again below, some three feet down ; and, while you are 
wondering at this seemingly wanton destruction, he lifts the 
bar on high, throws his head back, and pours down his 
thirsty throat a pint or more of pure cold water. This hid- 
den treasure is, strange as it may seem, the ascending sap, 
or rather the ascending pure rain-water which has been 
taken up by the roots, and is hurrying aloft, to be elabo- 
rated into sap, and leaf, and flower, and fruit, and fresh tis- 
sue for the very stem up which it originally climbed; and 
therefore it is that the woodman cuts the Watervine through 
first at the top of the piece which he wants, and not at the 



THE HIGH WOODS 305 

bottom ; for so rapid is the ascent of the sap that if he cut 
the stem below, the water would have all fled upwards be- 
fore he could cut it ofF above. Meanwhile, the old story 
of Jack and the Bean-stalk comes into your mind. In such 
a forest was the old dame's hut; and up such a bean-stalk 
Jack climbed, to find a giant and a castle high above. Why 
not ? What may not be up there ? You look up into the 
green cloud, and long for a moment to be a monkey. There 
may be monkeys up there over your head, burly red Howler, 
or tiny peevish Sapajou, peering down at you ; but you can- 
not peer up at them. The monkeys, and the parrots, and 
the humming-birds, and the flowers, and all the beauty, are 
upstairs — up above the green cloud. You are in " the 
empty nave of the cathedral," and " the service is being 
celebrated aloft in the blazing roof." 

We will hope that as you look up, you have not been 
careless enough to walk on ; for if you have you will be 
tripped up at once : nor to put your hand out incautiously 
to rest it against a tree, or what not, for fear of sharp 
thorns, ants, and wasps' nests. If you are all safe, your 
next steps, probably, as you struggle through the bush be- 
tween the tree-trunks of every possible size, will bring you 
face to face with huge upright walls of seeming boards, 
whose rounded edges slope upward till, as your eye follows 
them, you will find them enter an enormous stem, perhaps 
round, like one of the Norman pillars of Durham nave, and 
just as huge ; perhaps fluted, like one of William of 
Wykeham's columns at Winchester. There is the stem : 
but where is the tree ? Above the green cloud. You 



306 THE HIGH WOODS 

struggle up to it, between two of the broad walls, but find 
it not so easy to reach. Between you and it, are a half-a- 
dozen tough strings which you had not noticed at first — the 
eye cannot focus itself rapidly enough in this confusion of 
distances — which have to be cut through ere you can pass. 
Some of them are rooted in the ground, straight and tense ; 
some of them dangle and wave in the wind at every height. 
What are they ? Air-roots of wild Pines, or of Matapalos, 
or of Figs, or of Seguines, or of some other parasite ? 
Probably : but you cannot see. All you can see is, as you 
put your chin close against the trunk of the tree and look 
up, as if you were looking up against the side of a great 
ship set on end, that some sixty or eighty feet up in the 
green cloud, arms as big as English forest trees branch off; 
and that out of their forks a whole green garden of vegeta- 
tion has tumbled down twenty or thirty feet, and half 
climbed up again. You scramble round the tree to find 
whence this aerial garden has sprung : you cannot tell. 
The tree-trunk is smooth and free from climbers ; and 
that mass of verdure may belong possibly to the very cables 
which you meet ascending into the green cloud twenty or 
thirty yards back, or to that impenetrable tangle, a dozen 
yards on, which has climbed a small tree, and then a taller 
one again, and then a taller still, till it has climbed out of 
sight and possibly into the lower branches of the big tree. 
And what are their species ? What are their families ? 
Who knows ? Not even the most experienced woodman 
or botanist can tell you the names of plants of which he 
only sees the stems. The leaves, the flowers, the fruit, can 



THE HIGH WOODS 307 

only be examined by felling the tree ; and not even always 
then, for sometimes the tree when cut refuses to fall, linked 
as it is by chains of liane to all the trees around. Even 
that wonderful water-vine which we cut through just now 
may be one of three or even four different plants. 

Soon, you will be struck by the variety of the vegeta- 
tion ; and will recollect what you have often heard, that 
social plants are rare in the tropic forests. Certainly they 
are in the Trinidad ; where the only instances of social 
trees are the Moras (which I have never seen growing 
wild) and the Moriche palms. In Europe, a forest is usu- 
ally made up of one dominant plant of firs or of pines, of 
oaks or of beeches, of birch or of heather. Here no two 
plants seem alike. There are more species on an acre here 
than in all the New Forest, Savernake, or Sherwood. 
Stems rough, smooth, prickly, round, fluted, stilted, upright, 
sloping, branched, arched, jointed, opposite-leaved, alter- 
nate-leaved, leafless, or covered with leaves of every con- 
ceivable pattern, are jumbled together, till the eye and 
brain are tired of continually asking " What next ? " The 
stems are of every colour — copper, pink, grey, green, 
brown, black as if burnt, marbled with lichens, many of 
them silvery white, gleaming afar in the bush, furred with 
mosses and delicate creeping film-ferns, or laced with air- 
roots of some parasite aloft. Up this stem scrambles a 
climbing Seguine with entire leaves; up the next another 
quite different, with deeply-cut leaves ; up the next the 
Ceriman spreads its huge leaves, latticed and forked again 
and again. So fast do they grow, that they have not time 



308 THE HIGH WOODS 

to fill up the spaces between their nerves, and are conse- 
quently full of oval holes ; and so fast does its spadix of 
flowers expand, that (as do some other Aroids) an actual 
genial heat, and fire of passion, which may be tested by the 
thermometer, or even by the hand, is given ofF during 
fructification. Beware of breaking it, or the Seguines. 
They will probably give off an evil smell, and as probably 
a blistering milk. Look on at the next stem. Up it, and 
down again, a climbing fern which is often seen in hot- 
houses has tangled its finely-cut fronds. Up the next, a 
quite different fern is crawling, by pressing tightly to the 
rough bark its creeping root-stalks, furred like a hare's leg. 
Up the next, the prim little GrifFe-chatte plant has 
walked, by numberless clusters of small cats'-claws, which 
lay hold of the bark. And what is this delicious scent 
about the air ? Vanille ? Of course it is ; and up that 
stem zigzags the green fleshy chain of the Vanille Orchis. 
The scented pod is far above, out of your reach ; but not 
out of the reach of the next parrot, or monkey, or Negro 
hunter, who winds the treasure. And the stems themselves : 
to what trees do they belong ? It would be absurd for 
one to try to tell you who cannot tell one-twentieth of 
them himself. Suffice it to say, that over your head are 
perhaps a dozen kinds of admirable timber, which might be 
turned to a hundred uses in Europe, were it possible to get 
them thither : your guide (who here will be a second hos- 
pitable and cultivated Scot) will point with pride to one 
column after another, straight as those of a cathedral, and 
sixty to eighty feet without branch or knob. That, he will 



THE HIGH WOODS 309 

say, is Fiddlewood ; that a Carapo, that a Cedar, that a 
Roble (oak) ; that, larger than all you have seen yet, a 
Locust ; that, a Poui ; that, a Guatecare ; that an Olivier, 
woods which, he will tell you, are all but incorruptible, de- 
fying weather and insects. He will show you, as curiosi- 
ties, the smaller but intensely hard Letter wood, Lignum 
vitae, and Purple heart. He will pass by as useless weeds, 
Ceibas and Sandbox-trees, whose bulk appalls you. He 
will look up, with something like a malediction, at the 
Matapalos, which, every fifty yards, have seized on mighty 
trees, and are enjoying, I presume, every different stage of 
the strangling art, from the baby Matapalo, who, like one 
which you saw in the Botanic Garden, has let down his 
first air-root along his victim's stem, to the old sinner 
whose dark crown of leaves is supported, eighty feet in air, 
on innumerable branching columns of every size, cross- 
clasped to each other by transverse bars. The giant tree 
on which his seed first fell has rotted away utterly, and he 
stands in its place, prospering in his wickedness, like certain 
folk whom David knew too well. Your guide walks on 
with a sneer. But he stops with a smile of satisfaction as 
he sees lying on the ground dark green glossy leaves, which 
are fading into a bright crimson ; for overhead somewhere 
there must be a Balata, the king of the forest ; and there, 
close by, is his stem — a madder-brown column, whose 
head may be a hundred and fifty feet or more aloft. The 
forester pats the side of his favourite tree, as a breeder 
might that of his favourite race-horse. He goes on to 
evince his affection, in the fashion of West Indians, by 



310 THE HIGH WOODS 

giving it a chop with his cutlass ; but not in wantonness. 
He wishes to show you the hidden virtues, of this (in his 
eyes) noblest of trees — how there issues out swiftly from 
the wound a flow of thick white milk, which will congeal, 
in an hour's time, into a gum intermediate in its properties 
between caoutchouc and gutta-percha. He talks of a time 
when the English gutta-percha market shall be supplied 
from the Balatas of the northern hills, which cannot be 
shipped away as timber. He tells you how the tree is a 
tree of a generous, virtuous and elaborate race — " a tree of 
God, which is full of sap," as one said of old of such — and 
what could he say better, less or more ? For it is a Sapota, 
cousin to the Sapodilla, and other excellent fruit-trees, 
itself most excellent even in its fruit-bearing power; for 
every five years it is covered with such a crop of delicious 
plums, that the lazy Negro thinks it worth his while to 
spend days of hard work, besides incurring the penalty of 
the law (for the trees are Government property), in cutting 
it down for the sake of its fruit. But this tree your guide 
will cut himself. There is no gully between it and the 
Government station ; and he can carry it away ; and it is 
worth his while to do so ; for it will square, he thinks, into 
a log more than three feet in diameter, and eighty, ninety 
— he hopes almost a hundred — feet in length of hard, heavy 
wood, incorruptible, save in salt water ; better than oak, as 
good as teak, and only surpassed in this island by the Poui. 
He will make a stage round it, some eight feet high, and 
cut it above the spurs. It will take his convict gang (for 
convicts are turned to some real use in Trinidad) several 



THE HIGH WOODS 311 

days to get it down, and many more days to square it with 
the axe. A trace must be made to it through the wood, 
clearing away vegetation for which a European millionaire, 
could he keep it in his park, would gladly pay a hundred 
pounds a yard. The cleared stems, especially those of the 
palms, must be cut into rollers ; and the dragging of the 
huge log over them will be a work of weeks, especially in 
the wet season. But it can be done, and it shall be ; so he 
leaves a significant mark on his new-found treasure, and 
Jeads you on through the bush, hewing his way with light 
strokes right and left, so carelessly that you are inclined to 
beg him to hold his hand, and not destroy in a moment 
things so beautiful, so curious, things which would be in- 
valuable in an English hothouse. 

And where are the famous Orchids ? They perch on 
every bough and stem ; but they are not, with three or 
four exceptions, in flower in the winter; and if they were, 
I know nothing about them — at least, I know enough to 
know how little I know. Whosoever has read Darwin's 
Fertilization of Orchids, and finds in his own reason that 
the book is true, had best say nothing about the beautiful 
monsters till he has seen with his own eyes more than his 
master. 

And yet even the three or four that are in flower are 
worth going many a mile to see. In the hothouse, they 
seem almost artificial from their strangeness : but to see 
them " natural," on natural boughs, gives a sense of their 
reality, which no unnatural situation can give. Even to 
look up at them perched on bough and stem, as one rides 



312 THE HIGH WOODS 

by ; and to guess what exquisite and fantastic form may 
issue, in a few months or weeks, out of those fleshy, often 
unsightly leaves, is a strange pleasure ; a spur to the fancy 
which is surely wholesome, if we will but believe that all 
these things were invented by A Fancy, which desires to 
call out in us, by contemplating them, such small fancy as 
we possess ; and to make us poets, each according to this 
power, by showing a world in which, if rightly looked at, 
all is poetry. 

Another fact will soon force itself on your attention, un- 
less you wish to tumble down and get wet up to your 
knees. The soil is furrowed everywhere by holes ; by 
graves, some two or three feet wide and deep, and of uncer- 
tain length and shape, often wandering about for thirty or 
forty feet, and running confusedly into each other. They 
are not the work of man, nor of an animal ; for no earth 
seems to have been thrown out of them. In the bottom 
of the dry graves you sometimes see a decaying root : but 
most of them just now are full of water, and of tiny fish 
also, who burrow in the mud and sleep during the dry 
season, to come out and swim during the wet. These 
graves are some of them, plainly quite new. Some, again, 
are very old ; for trees of all sizes are growing in them and 
over them. 

What makes them ? A question not easily answered. 
But the shrewdest foresters say that they have the roots of 
trees now dead. Either the tree has fallen and torn its 
roots out of the ground, or the roots and stumps have rotted 
in their place, and the soil above them has fallen in. 



THE HIGH WOODS 313 

But they must decay very quickly, these roots, to leave 
their quite fresh graves thus empty ; and — now one thinks of 
it — how few fallen trees, or even dead sticks, there are about. 
An English wood, if left to itself, would be cumbered with 
fallen timber ; and one has heard of forests in North Amer- 
ica, through which it is all but impossible to make way, so 
high are piled up, among the still-growing trees, dead logs 
in every stage of decay. Such a sight may be seen in Eu- 
rope, among the high Silver-fir forests of the Pyrenees. 
How is it not so here ? How indeed ? And how comes 
it — if you will, look again — that there are few or no fallen 
trees, and actually no leaf-mould ? In an English wood 
there would be a foot — perhaps two feet — of black soil, 
renewed every autumn leaf fall. Two feet ? One has 
heard often enough of bison-hunting in Himalayan forests 
among Deodaras one hundred and fifty feet high, and scar- 
let Rhododendrons thirty feet high, growing in fifteen or 
twenty feet of leaf-and-timber mould. And here in a for- 
est equally ancient, every plant is growing out of the bare 
yellow loam, as it might in a well-hoed garden bed. Is it 
not strange? 

Most strange ; till you remember where you are — in one 
of nature's hottest and dampest laboratories. Nearly eighty 
inches of yearly rain and more than eighty degrees of per- 
petual heat make swift work with vegetable fibre, which, in 
our cold and sluggard clime, would curdle into leaf-mould, 
perhaps into peat. Far to the north, in poor old Ireland, 
and far to the south, in Patagonia, begin the zones of peat, 
where dead vegetable fibre, its treasures of light and heat 



3 14 THE HIGH WOODS 

locked up, lies all but useless age after age. But this is the 
zone of illimitable sun-force, which destroys as swiftly as 
it generates, and generates again as swiftly as it destroys. 
Here, when the forest giant falls, as some tell me that they 
have heard him fall, on silent nights, when the cracking of 
the roots below the lianes aloft rattles like musketry through 
the woods, till the great trunk comes down, with a boom 
as of a heavy gun, re-echoing on from mountain-side 
to mountain-side ; then — 

" Nothing in him that doth fade 
But doth suffer an air ! change 
Into something rich and strange." 

Under the genial rain and genial heat the timber tree it- 
self, all its tangled ruin of lianes and parasites, and the 
boughs and leaves snapped off not only by the blow, but by 
the very wind, of the falling tree — all melt away swiftly 
and peacefully in a few months — say almost a few days — 
into the water, and carbonic acid, and sunlight, out of 
which they were created at first, to be absorbed instantly 
by the green leaves around, and, transmuted into fresh 
forms of beauty, leave not a wrack behind. Explained 
thus — and this I believe to be the true explanation — the 
absence of leaf-mould is one of the grandest, as it is one 
of the most startling, phenomena, of the forest. 

Look here at a fresh wonder. Away in front of us a 
smooth grey pillar glistens on high. You can see neither 
the top nor the bottom of it. But its colour, and its per- 
fectly cylindrical shape, tell you what it is — a glorious 



THE HIGH WOODS 315 

Palmiste ; one of those queens of the forest which you saw 
standing in the fields ; with its capital buried in the green 
cloud and its base buried in that bank of green velvet 
plumes, which you must skirt carefully round, for they are 
prickly dwarf palm, called Black Roseau. Close to it rises 
another pillar, as straight and smooth, but one-fourth of 
the diameter — a giant's walking cane. Its head, too, is in 
the green cloud. But near are two or three younger ones 
only forty or fifty feet high, and you see their delicate 
feather heads, and are told that they are Manacques ; the 
slender nymphs which attend upon the forest queen, as 
beautiful, though not as grand, as she. 

The land slopes down fast now. You are tramping 
through stiff mud, and those Roseaux are a sign of water. 
There is a stream or gulley near : and now for the first time 
you can see clear sunshine through the stems ; and see, too, 
something of the bank of foliage on the other side of the 
brook. You can catch sight, it may be, of the head of a 
tree aloft, blazing with golden trumpet flowers, which is a 
Poui ; and of another low-one covered with hoar-frost, 
perhaps a Croton; and of another, a giant covered with 
purple tassels. That is an Angelim. Another giant over- 
tops even him. His dark glossy leaves toss off sheets of 
silver light as they flicker in the breeze ; for it blows 
hard aloft outside while you are in the stifling calm. That 
is a Balata. And what is that on high ? Twenty or thirty 
square yards of rich crimson a hundred feet above the 
ground. The flowers may belong to the tree itself. It 
may be Mountain-mangrove, which I have never seen in 



316 THE HIGH WOODS 

flower : but take the glasses and decide. No. The 
flowers belong to a liane. The " wonderful " Prince of 
Wales' feather has taken possession of the head of a huge 
Mombin, and tiled it all over with crimson combs which 
crawl out to the ends of the branches, and dangle twenty 
or thirty feet down, waving and leaping in the breeze. 
And all over blazes the cloudless blue. 

You gaze astounded. Ten steps downward, and the 
vision is gone. The green cloud has closed again over 
your head, and you are stumbling in the darkness of the 
bush, half blinded by the sudden change from the blaze to 
the shade. Beware. " Take care of the Croc-chien ! " 
shouts your companion : and you are aware of, not a foot 
from your face, a long, green, curved whip, armed with pairs 
of barbs some four inches apart ; and you are aware also, at 
the same moment, that another has seized you by the arm, an- 
other by the knees, and that you must back out, unless you 
are willing to part with your clothes, and your flesh after- 
wards. You back out, and find that you have walked into 
the tips — luckily only into the tips — of the fern-like fronds 
of a trailing and climbing palm such as you see in the Botanic 
Gardens. That came from the East, and furnishes the 
rattan-canes. This furnishes the gri-gri-canes, and is 
rather worse to meet, if possible, than the rattan. Your 
companion, while he helps you to pick the barbs out, calls 
the palm laughingly by another name, " Suelta-mi-Ingles " ; 
and tells you the old story of the Spanish soldier at San 
Josef. You are near the water now; for here is a thicket 
of Balisiers. Push through, under their great plantain-like 



THE HIGH WOODS 2 l 7 

leaves. Slip down the muddy bank to that patch of gravel. 
See first, though, that it is not tenanted already by a deadly 
Mapepire, or rattlesnake, which has not the grace, as his 
cousin in North America has, to use his rattle. 

The brooklet, muddy with last night's rain, is dammed 
and bridged by winding roots, in the shape like the jointed 
wooden snakes which we used to play with as children. 
They belong probably to a fig, whose trunk is somewhere 
up in the green cloud. Sit down on one, and look, around 
and aloft. From the soil to the sky, which peeps through 
here and there, the air is packed with green leaves of every 
imaginable hue and shape. Round our feet are Arums, 
with snow-white spadixes and hoods, one instance among 
many here of brilliant colour developing itself in deep 
shade. But is the darkness of the forest actually as great 
as it seems ? Or are our eyes, accustomed to the blaze 
outside, unable to expand rapidly enough, and so liable to 
mistake for darkness air really full of light reflected down- 
wards, again and again, at every angle, from the glossy sur- 
faces of a million of leaves ? At least we may be ex- 
cused; for a bat has made the same mistake, and flits past 
us at noonday. And there is another — No ; as it turns, a 
blaze of metallic azure off" the upper side of the wings 
proves this one to be no bat, but a Morpho — a moth as big 
as a bat. And what was that second larger flash of golden 
green, which dashed at the moth, and back to yonder 
branch not ten feet off"? A Jacamar — kingfisher, as they 
miscall her here, sitting fearless of man, with the moth in 
her long beak. Her throat is snowy white, her under- 



318 THE HIGH WOODS 

parts rich red brown. Her breast, and all her upper plum- 
age and long tail, glitter with golden green. There is 
light enough in this darkness, it seems. But now look 
again at the plants. Among the white-flowered Arums are 
other Arums, stalked and spotted, of which beware ; for 
they are the poisonous Seguine-diable, the dumb-cane, of 
which evil tales were told in the days of slavery. A few 
drops of its milk, put into the mouth of a refractory slave, 
or again into the food of a cruel master, could cause swell- 
ing, choking, and burning agony for many hours. 

Over our heads bend the great arrow leaves and purple 
leaf-stalks of the Tanias ; and mingled with them, leaves 
often larger still : oval, glossy, bright, ribbed, reflecting 
from their underside a silver light. They belong to 
Arumas; and from their ribs are woven the Indian baskets 
and packs. Above these, again, the Balisiers bend their 
long leaves, eight or ten feet long apiece ; and under the 
shade of the leaves their gay flower-spikes, like double rows 
of orange and black-birds' beaks upside down. Above 
them, and among them, rise stiff upright shrubs, with pairs 
of pointed leaves, a foot long some of them, pale green 
above, and yellow or fawn-coloured beneath. You may 
see, by the three longitudinal nerves in each leaf, that they 
are Melastomas of different kinds — a sure token that you 
are in the Tropics — a probable token that you are in 
Tropical America. 

And over them, and among them, what a strange variety 
of foliage. Look at the contrast between the Balisiers and 
that branch which has thrust itself among them, which you 



THE HIGH WOODS 319 

take for a dark copper-coloured fern, so finely divided are 
its glossy leaves. It is really a Mimosa-Bois Mulatre as 
they call it here. What a contrast again, the huge feathery 
fronds of the Cocorite palms which stretch right away 
hither over our heads, twenty and thirty feet in length. 
And what is that spot of crimson flame hanging in the 
darkest spot of all from an under-bough of that low weep- 
ing tree ? A flower-head of the Rosa del Monte. And 
what that bright straw-coloured fox's brush above it, with a 
brown hood like that of an Arum, brush and hood nigh 
three feet long each ? Look — for you require to look more 
than once, sometimes more than twice — here, up the stem 
of that Cocorite, or as much of it as you can see in the 
thicket. It is all jagged with the brown butts of its old 
fallen leaves ; and among the butts perch broad-leaved 
ferns, and fleshy Orchids, and above them, just below the 
plume of mighty fronds, the yellow fox's brush, which is 
its spathe of flower. 

What next ? Above the Cocorites dangle, amid a dozen 
different kinds of leaves, festoons of a liane, or of two, for 
one has purple flowers, the other yellow — Bignonias, 
Bauhinias — what not ? And through them a Carat palm 
has thrust its thin bending stem, and spread out its flat head 
of fan-shaped leaves twenty feet long each : while over it, 
I verily believe, hangs eighty feet aloft the head of the very 
tree upon whose roots we are sitting. For amid the green 
cloud you may see sprigs of leaf somewhat like that of a 
weeping willow; and there, probably, is the trunk to which 
they belong, or rather what will be a trunk at last. At 



320 THE HIGH WOODS 

present it is like a number of round edged boards of every 
size, set on end, and slowly coalescing at their edges. 
There is a slit down the middle of the trunk, twenty or 
thirty feet long. You may see the green light of the 
forest shining through it. Yes, that is probably the fig ; or, 
if not, then something else. For who am I, that I should 
know the hundredth part of the forms on which we look ? 

And above all you catch a glimpse of that crimson mass 
of Norantea which we admired just now; and, black as 
yew against the blue sky and white cloud, the plumes of one 
Palmiste, who has climbed towards the light, it may be for 
centuries, through the green cloud ; and now, weary and 
yet triumphant, rests her dark head among the bright foliage 
of a Ceiba, and feeds unhindered on the sun. 

There, take your tired eyes down again ; and turn them 
right, or left, or where you will, to see the same scene, and 
yet never the same. New forms, new combinations ; 
wealth of creative Genius — let us use the wise old word in 
its true sense — incomprehensible by the human intellect or 
the human eye, even as He is who makes it all, Whose 
garment, or rather Whose speech, it is. The eye is not 
filled with seeing, or the ear with hearing; and never 
would be, did you roam these forests for a hundred years. 
How many years would you need merely to examine and 
discriminate the different species ? And when you had 
done that, how many more to learn their action and reac- 
tion on each other ? How many more to learn their 
virtues, properties, uses ? How many more to answer that 
perhaps ever unanswerable question — How they exist and 



THE HIGH WOODS 32 1 

grow at all ? By what miracle they are compacted out of 
light, air, and water, each after its kind. How, again, 
those kinds began to be, and what they were like at first ? 
Whether those crowded, struggling, competing shapes are 
stable or variable ? Whether or not they are varying still ? 
Whether even now, as we sit here, the great God may not 
be creating, slowly but surely, new forms of beauty round 
us. Why not ? If He chose to do it, could He not do it ? 
And even had you answered that question, which would re- 
quire whole centuries of observation as patient and accurate 
as that which Mr. Darwin employed on Orchids and 
climbing plants, how much nearer would you be to the 
deepest question of all — Do these things exist, or only ap- 
pear ? Are they solid realities, or a mere phantasmagoria, 
orderly indeed, and law-ruled, but a phantasmagoria still ; a 
picture-book by which God speaks to rational essences, 
created in His own likeness ? And even had you solved 
that old problem, and decided for Berkeley or against him, 
you would still have to learn from these forests a knowledge 
which enters into man not through the head, but through 
the heart ; which (let some modern philosophers say what 
they will) defies all analysis, and can be no more defined or 
explained by words than a mother's love. I mean, the 
causes and effects of their beauty ; that " .^Esthetic of 
plants," of which Schleiden has spoken so well in that 
charming book of his The Plant, which all should read who 
wish to know somewhat of " The Open Secret." 

But when they read it, let them read with open hearts. 
For that same " Open Secret " is, I suspect, one of those 



322 THE HIGH WOODS 

which God may hide from the wise and prudent, and yet 
reveal to babes. 

At least, so it seemed to me, the first day that I went, 
awe-struck, into the High Woods; and so it seemed to 
me, the last day that I came, even more awe-struck, out of 
them. 

At Last : a Christmas in the West Indies (London and 
New York, 1871). 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 
C. F. GORDON-CUMMING 

THE valley can be approached from several different 
points. That by which we entered is, I think, 
known as Inspiration Point. When we started from 
Clarke's Ranch, we were then at about the same level as 
we are at this moment — namely, 4,000 feet above the sea. 
The road gradually wound upwards through beautiful forest 
and by upland valleys, where the snow still lay pure and 
white : and here and there, where it had melted and exposed 
patches of dry earth, the red flame-like blossoms of the 
snow-plant gleamed vividly. 

It was slow work toiling up those steep ascents, and it 
must have taken us much longer than our landlord had ex- 
pected, for he had despatched us without a morsel of lunch- 
eon ; and ere we reached the half-way house, where we 
were to change horses, we were all ravenous. A dozen 
hungry people, with appetites sharpened by the keen, ex- 
hilarating mountain air ! No provisions of any sort were 
to be had ; but the compassionate horse-keeper, hearing our 
pitiful complaints, produced a loaf and a pot of blackberry 
jelly, and we all sat down on a bank, and ate our " piece " 
(as the bairns in Scotland would say) with infinite relish, 
and drank from a clear stream close by. So we were satis- 



324 THE YO-SEMIT& VALLEY 

fied with bread here in the wilderness. I confess to many 
qualms as to how that good fellow fared himself, as loaves 
cannot grow abundantly in those parts. 

Once more we started on our toilsome way across 
mountain meadows and forest ridges, till at last we had 
gained a height of about 7,000 feet above the sea. Then 
suddenly we caught sight of the valley lying about 3,000 
feet below us, an abrupt chasm in the great rolling expanse 
of billowy granite ridges — or I should rather describe it as a 
vast sunken pit, with perpendicular walls, and carpeted with 
a level meadow, through which flows a river gleaming like 
quicksilver. 

Here and there a vertical cloud of spray on the face of 
the huge crags told where some snow-fed stream from the 
upper levels had found its way to the brink of the chasm — 
a perpendicular fall of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet. 

The fall nearest to where we stood, yet a distance of 
seven miles, was pointed out as the Bridal Veil. It seemed 
a floating film of finest mist, on which played the loveliest 
rainbow lights. For the sun was already lowering behind 
us, though the light shown clear and bright on the cold 
white granite crags, and on the glittering snow-peaks of the 
high Sierras. 

Each mighty precipice, and rock-needle, and strange 
granite dome was pointed out to us by name as we halted 
on the summit of the pass ere commencing the steep de- 
scent. The Bridal Veil falls over a granite crag near the 
entrance of the valley, which, on the opposite side, is 
guarded by a stupendous square-cut granite mass, projecting 



THE YO-SEMITfi VALLEY 325 

so far as seemingly to block the way. These form the 
gateway of this wonderful granite prison. Perhaps the 
great massive cliff rather suggests the idea of a huge 
keep wherein the genii of the valley braved the siege of the 
Ice-giants. 

The Indians revere it as the gieat chief of the valley, but 
white men only know it as El Capitan. If it must have a 
new title, I think it should at least rank as a field-marshal 
in the rock-world, for assuredly no other crag exists that 
can compare with it. Just try to realize its dimensions : a 
massive face of smooth cream-coloured granite, half a mile 
long, half a mile wide, three-fifths of a mile high. Its 
actual height is 3,300 feet — (I think that 5,280 feet go to a 
mile). Think of our beautiful Castle Rock in Edinburgh, 
with its 434 feet ; or Dover Castle, 469 feet ; or even 
Arthur's Seat, 822 feet, — what pigmies they would seem 
could some wizard transport them to the base of this grand 
crag, on whose surface not a blade of grass, not a fern or a 
lichen, finds holding ground, or presumes to tinge the bare, 
clean-cut precipice, which, strange to tell, is clearly visible 
from the great San Joaquin Valley, a distance of sixty 
miles ! 

Imagine a crag just the height of Snowdon, with a lovely 
snow-stream falling perpendicularly from its summit to its 
base, and a second and larger fall in the deep gorge where it 
meets the rock-wall of the valley. The first is nameless, 
and will vanish with the snows; but the second never dries 
up, even in summer. It is known to the Indians as Lung- 
oo-too-koo-ya, which describes its graceful length ; but 



326 THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

white men call it The Virgin's Tears or The Ribbon 
Fall — a blending of millinery and romance doubtless de- 
vised by the same genius who changed the Indian name of 
Pohono to The Bridal Veil. 

We passed close to the latter as we entered the valley — 
in fact, forded the stream just below the fall — and agreed 
that if Pohono be in truth, as the Indian legend tells, the 
spirit of an evil wind, it surely must be repentant glorified 
spirit, for nothing so beautiful could be evil. It is a sight 
to gladden the angels — a most ethereal fall, light as steam, 
swaying with every breath. 

It falls from an overhanging rock, and often the current 
produced by its own rushing seems to pass beneath the 
rock, and so checks the whole column, and carries it up- 
ward in a wreath of whitest vapour, blending with the true 
clouds. 

When the rainbow plays on it, it too seems to be wafted 
up, and floats in a jewelled spray, wherein sapphires and 
diamonds and opals, topaz and emeralds, all mingle their 
dazzling tints. At other times it rushes down in a shower 
of fairy-like rockets in what appears to be a perpendicular 
column 1,000 feet high, and loses itself in a cloud of mist 
among the tall dark pines which clothe the base of the crag. 

A very accurate gentleman has just assured me that it 
is not literally perpendicular, as, after a leap of 630 feet, it 
strikes the rock, and then makes a fresh start in a series of 
almost vertical cascades, which form a dozen streamlets ere 
they reach the meadows. He adds that the fall is about 
fifty feet wide at the summit. 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 327 

The rock-mass over which it falls forms the other great 
granite portal of the valley, not quite so imposing as its 
massive neighbour, but far more shapely. In fact, it bears 
so strong a resemblance to a Gothic building that it is 
called the Cathedral Rock. It is a cathedral for the giants, 
being 2,660 feet in height; and two graceful rock-pinnacles 
attached to the main rock, and known as the Cathedral 
Spires, are each 500 feet in height. 

Beyond these, towers a truly imposing rock-needle, 
which has been well named The Sentinel. It is an 
obelisk 1,000 feet in height, rising from the great rock-wall, 
which forms a pedestal of 2,000 more. 

As if to balance these three rock-needles on the right- 
hand side, there are, on the left, three rounded mountains 
which the Indians call Pompompasus — that is, the Leap- 
ing-Frog Rocks. They rise in steps, forming a triple 
mountain 3,630 feet high. Tall frogs these, even for Cali- 
fornia. Imaginative people say the resemblance is unmis- 
takable, and that all the frogs are poised as if in readiness 
for a spring, with their heads all turned the same way. 
For my own part, I have a happy knack of not seeing 
these accidental likenesses, and especially those faces and 
pictures (generally grotesque) which some most aggravating 
people are always discovering among the lines and weather- 
stains on the solemn crags, and which they insist on 
pointing out to their unfortunate companions. Our coach- 
man seemed to consider this a necessary part of his office, 
so I assume there must be some people who like it. 

Farther up the valley, two gigantic Domes of white 



328 THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

granite are built upon the foundation of the great encom- 
passing wall. One stands on each side of the valley. 
The North Dome is perfect, like the roof of some vast 
mosque ; but the South, or Half Dome, is an extraordinary 
freak of nature, very puzzling to geologists, as literally 
half of a stupendous mass of granite has disappeared, leav- 
ing no trace of its existence, save a sheer precipitous rock- 
face, considerably over 4,000 feet in height, from which the 
corresponding half has evidently broken off, and slipped 
down into some fearful chasm, which apparently it has 
been the means of rilling up. 

Above the Domes, and closing in the upper end df the 
valley, is a beautiful snow mountain, called Cloud's Rest, 
which, seen from afar, is the most attractive point of all, 
and one which I must certainly visit some day. But 
meanwhile there are nearer points of infinite interest, the 
foremost being the waterfall from which the valley takes its 
name, and which burst suddenly upon our amazed vision 
when we reached the base of the Sentinel Rock. 

It is so indescribably lovely that I altogether despair of 
conveying any notion of it in words, so shall not try to do 
so yet a while. 

But from what I have told you, you must perceive that 
each step in this strange valley affords a study for weeks, 
whether to an artist, a geologist, or any other lover of 
beautiful and wonderful scenes ; and more than ever, I 
congratulate myself on having arrived here while all the 
oaks, alders, willows, and other deciduous trees, are bare 
and leafless, so that no curtain of dense foliage conceals 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 329 

the countless beauties of the valley. Already I have seen 
innumerable most beautiful views, scarcely veiled by the 
filmy network of twigs, but which evidently will be alto- 
gether concealed a month hence, when these have donned 
their summer dress. To me these leafless trees rank with 
fires and snows. I have not seen one since I left England, 
so I look at them with renewed interest, and delight in the 
beauty of their anatomy, as you and I have done many a 
time in the larch woods and the " birken braes " of the 
Findhorn (where the yellow twigs of the larch, and the 
grey aspen, and claret-coloured sprays of birch, blend with 
russet oak and green Scotch firs, and produce a winter 
colouring well-nigh as varied as that of summer). 

Here there is an enchanting reminder of home in the tall 
poplar-trees — the Balm of Gilead — which are just bursting 
into leaf, and fill the air with heavenly perfume. They 
grow in clumps all along the course of the Merced, the 
beautiful " river of Mercy," which flows through this green 
level valley so peacefully, as if it was thankful for this 
quiet interval in the course of its restless life. 

There is no snow in the valley, but it still lies thickly on 
the hills all round. Very soon it will melt, and then the 
falls will all be in their glory, and the meadows will be 
flooded and the streams impassable. I am glad we have 
arrived in time to wander about dry-footed, and to learn 
the geography of the country in its normal state. 

The valley is an almost dead level, about eight miles 
long, and varies in width from half a mile to two miles. It 
is like a beautiful park of greenest sward, through which 



33° THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

winds the clear, calm river — a capital trout-stream, of about 
eighty feet in width. In every direction are scattered pic- 
turesque groups of magnificent trees, noble old oaks, and 
pines of 250 feet in height ! The river is spanned by two 
wooden bridges ; and three neat hotels are well placed 
about the middle of the valley, half a mile apart — happily 
not fine, incongruous buildings, but wooden bungalows, 
well suited to the requirements of such pilgrims as our- 
selves. 

May-day, 1877. 
May-day ! What a vision of langsyne ! Of the May- 
dew we used to gather from off the cowslips by the sweet 
burnside, in those dear old days 



" When we all were young together, 
And the earth was new to me." 



I dare say you forgot all about May-day this morning, in the 
prosaic details of town life. But here we ran no such risk, 
for we had determined to watch the Beltane sunrise, re- 
flected in the glassiest of mountain-tarns, known as the 
Mirror Lake ; and as it lies about three miles from here, in 
one of the upper forks of the valley, we had to astir be- 
times. 

So, when the stars began to pale in the eastern sky, we 
were astir, and with the earliest ray of dawn set off like 
true pilgrims bound to drink of some holy spring on May 
morning. For the first two miles our path lay across 
quiet meadows, which as yet are only sprinkled with bios- 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 33 1 

som. We found no cowslips, but washed our faces in 
Californian May-dew, which we brushed from the fresh 
young grass and ferns. Soon, they tell me, there will be 
violets, cowslips, and primroses. We passed by the orchard 
of the first settler in the valley ; his peach and cherry trees 
were laden with pink and white blossoms, his strawberry- 
beds likewise promising an abundant crop. 

It was a morning of calm beauty, and the massive grey 
crags all around the valley lay " like sleeping kings " robed 
in purple gloom, while the pale yellow light crept behind 
them, the tall pines forming a belt of deeper hue round 
their base. 

About two miles above the Great Yo-semite Falls, the 
valley divides into three branches — canyons, I should say, 
or, more correctly canons. The central one is the main 
branch, through which the Merced itself descends from the 
high Sierras, passing through the Little Yo-semite Valley, 
and thence rushing down deep gorges, and leaping two prec- 
ipices of 700 and 400 feet (which form the Nevada and 
the Vernal Falls), and so entering the Great Valley, where 
for eight miles it finds rest. 

The canyon which diverges to the right is that down 
which rushes the South Fork of the Merced, which bears 
the musical though modern name of Illillouette. It rises at 
the base of Mount Starr King, and enters the valley by the 
graceful falls which bear this pretty name. 

At the point where we left the main valley to turn into 
the Tenaya Fork, the rock-wall forms a sharp angle, end- 
ing in a huge columnar mass of very white granite 2,400 



33 2 THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

feet in height. The Indians call it Hunto, which means 
one who keeps watch ; but the white men call it Washing- 
ton Column. 

Beside it, the rock-wall has taken the form of gigantic 
arches. The lower rock seems to have weakened and 
crumbled or split off in huge flakes, while the upper por- 
tions remain, overhanging considerably, and forming regu- 
larly arched cliffs 2,000 feet in height. I cannot think how 
it has happened that in so republican a community these 
mighty rocks should be known as the Royal Arches, unless 
from some covert belief that they are undermined, and 
liable to topple over. Their original name is To-coy-ce, 
which describes the arched hood of an Indian baby's cradle 
— a famous nursery for giants. 

The perpendicular rock-face beneath the arches is a 
sheer, smooth surface, yet seamed with deep cracks as 
though it would fall, were it not for the mighty buttresses 
of solid rock which project for some distance, casting deep 
shadows across the cliff. As a test of size, I noticed a tiny 
pine growing from a crevice in the rock-face, and on com- 
paring it with another in a more accessible position, I found 
that it was really a very large, well-grown tree. 

Just at this season, when the snows on the Sierras are 
beginning to melt, a thousand crystal streams find temporary 
channels along the high levels till they reach the smooth 
verge of the crags, and thence leap in white foam, forming 
temporary falls of exceeding beauty. Three such graceful 
falls at present overleap the mighty arches, and, in their 
turn, produce pools and exquisitely clear streams, which 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 333 

thread their devious way through woods and meadows, seek- 
ing the river of Mercy. 

So the air is musical with the lullaby of hidden waters, and 
the murmur of the unseen river rippling over its pebbly bed. 
• Turning to the right, we next ascended Tenaya valley, 
which is beautifully wooded, chiefly with pine and oak, and 
strewn with the loveliest mossy boulders. Unfortunately, 
the number of rattlesnakes is rather a drawback to perfect 
enjoyment here. I have so long been accustomed to our 
perfect immunity from all manner of noxious creatures in 
the blessed South Sea Isles, that I find it difficult at first to 
recall my wonted caution, and to " gang warily." How- 
ever, to-day we saw no evil creatures — only a multitude of 
the jolliest little chip-munks, which are small grey squirrels 
of extreme activity. They are very tame, and dance about 
the trees close to us, jerking their brush, and giving the 
funniest little skips, and sometimes fairly chattering to us ! 
Beyond this wood we found the Mirror Lake. It is a 
small pool, but exquisitely cradled in the very midst of stern 
granite giants, which stand all around as sentinels, guarding 
its placid sleep. Willows, already covered with downy 
tufts, and now just bursting into slender leaflets, fringe its 
shores, and tall cedars and pines overshadow its waters, and 
are therein reflected in the stillness of early dawn, when 
even the granite crags far overhead also find themselves 
mirrored in the calm lakelet. But with the dawn comes a 
whispering breeze; and just as the sun's first gleam kisses 
the waters, the illusion vanishes, and there remains only a 
somewhat muddy and troubled pool. 



334 THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

It lies just at the base of that extraordinary Half-Dome 
of which I told you yesterday — a gigantic crest of granite, 
which rises above the lake almost precipitously to a height 
of 4,737 feet. Only think of it ! — nearly a mile ! Of this 
the upper 2,000 feet is a sheer face of granite crag, abso- 
lutely vertical, except that the extreme summit actually pro- 
jects somewhat ; otherwise it is as clean cut as if the 
mighty Dome had been cloven with a sword. A few dark 
streaks near the summit (due, I believe, to a microscopic 
fungus or lichen) alone relieve the unbroken expanse of 
glistening, creamy white. 

The lower half slopes at a very slight incline, and is like- 
wise a solid mass of granite — not made up of broken frag- 
ments, of which there are a wonderfully small proportion 
anywhere in the valley. So the inference is, that in the 
tremendous convulsion this mighty chasm was created, the 
great South Dome was split from the base to the summit, 
and that half of it slid down into the yawning gulf: thus 
the gently rounded base, between the precipice and the lake, 
was doubtless originally the summit of the missing half 
mountain. 

I believe that geologists are now satisfied that this strange 
valley, with its clean-cut, vertical walls, was produced by 
what is called in geology " a fault," — namely, that some of 
the earth's ribs having given away internally, a portion of 
the outer crust has subsided, leaving an unoccupied space. 
That such was the case in Yo-semite, is proved by much 
scientific reasoning. It is shown that the two sides of the 
valley in no way correspond, so the idea of a mere gigantic 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 335 

fissure cannot be entertained. Besides, as the valley is as 
wide at the base as at the summit, the vertical walls must 
have moved apart bodily, — a theory which would involve a 
movement of the whole chain of the Sierras for a distance 
of a half a mile. 

There is not trace of any glacier having passed through 
the valley, so that the Ice-giants have had no share in 
making it. Neither can it have been excavated by the 
long-continued action of rushing torrents, such as have 
carved great canyons in many parts of the Sierra Nevada. 
These never have vertical walls ; and besides, the smoothest 
faces of granite in Yo-semite are turned towards the lower 
end of the valley, proving at once that they were never 
produced by forces moving downward. 

So it is simply supposed that a strip of the Sierras caved 
in, and that in time the melting snows and streams formed 
a great deep lake, which filled up the whole space now oc- 
cupied by the valley. In the course of ages the debris of 
the hills continually falling into the lake, must have filled 
up the chasm to a level with the canyon, which is the 
present outlet from the valley ; and as the glaciers on the 
upper Sierras disappeared, and the water-supply grew less, 
the lake must have gradually dried up (and that in com- 
paratively recent times), and its bed of white granite sand, 
mingled with vegetable mould, was transformed into a 
green meadow, through which the quiet river now glides 
peacefully. 

This evening the sun set in a flood of crimson and gold — 
such a glorious glow as would have dazzled an eagle. It 



33^ THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

paled to a soft primrose, then ethereal green. Later, the 
pearly-grey clouds were rose-flushed by an afterglow more 
vivid than the sunset itself — a rich full carmine, which 
quickly faded away to the cold, intense blue of a Californian 
night. It was inexpressibly lovely. 

Then the fitful wind rose in gusts — a melancholy, moan- 
ing wail, vibrating among rocks, forests, and waters, with a 
low, surging sound — a wild mountain melody. 

No wonder the Indians reverence the beautiful 
Yo-semite Falls. Even the white settlers in the val- 
ley cannot resist their influence, but speak of them with 
an admiration that amounts to love. Some of them 
have spent the winter here, and seem almost to have 
enjoyed it. 

They say that if I could see the falls in their winter 
robes, all fringed with icicles, I should gain a glimpse of 
fairyland. At the base of the great fall the fairies build a 
real ice-palace, something more than a hundred feet high. 
It is formed by the ever falling, freezing spray ; and the 
bright sun gleams on this glittering palace of crystal, and 
the falling water, striking upon it, shoots off" in showers like 
myriad opals and diamonds. 

Now scarcely an icicle remains, and the falls are in their 
glory. I had never dreamt of anything so lovely. . . . 
Here we stand in the glorious sunlight, among pine-trees a 
couple of hundred feet in height; and they are pigmies like 
ourselves in presence of even the lowest step of the stately 
fall, which leaps and dashes from so vast a height that it loses 
all semblance of water. It is a splendid bouquet of glisten- 



THE YO-SEMIXE VALLEY 337 

ing rockets, which, instead of rushing heavenward, shoot 
down as if from the blue canopy, which seems to touch the 
brink nearly 2,700 feet above us. 

Like myriad falling stars they flash, each keeping its sep- 
arate course for several hundred feet, till at length it blends 
with ten thousand more, in the grand avalanche of frothy, 
fleecy foam, which for ever and for ever falls, boiling and 
raging like a whirlpool, among the huge black boulders in 
the deep cauldron below, and throwing back clouds of mist 
and vapour. 

The most exquisite moment occurs when you reach some 
spot where the sun's rays, streaming past you, transform the 
light vapour into brilliant rainbow-prisms, which gird the 
falls with vivid iris-bars. As the water-rockets flash 
through these radiant belts, they seem to carry the colour 
onwards as they fall ; and sometimes it wavers and trembles 
in the breeze, so that the rainbow knows not where to rest, 
but forms a moving column of radiant tri-colour. 

So large a body of water rushing through the air, natur- 
ally produces a strong current, which, passing between the 
face of the rock and the fall, carries the latter well forward, 
so that it becomes the sport of every breeze that dances 
through the valley ; hence this great column is forever 
vibrating from side to side, and often it forms a semi-circu- 
lar curve. 

The width of the stream at the summit is about twenty 
to thirty feet, but at the base of the upper fall it has ex- 
panded to a width of fully 300 feet ; and, as the wind car- 
ries it to one side or the other, it plays over a space of fully 



33§ THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

1,000 feet in width, of a precipitous rock-face 1, 600 feet in 
depth. That is the height of the upper fall. 

As seen from below the Yo-semite, though divided into 
three distinct falls, is apparently all on one plane. It is 
only when you reach some point from which you see it 
sideways, that you realize that the great upper fall lies fully 
a quarter of a mile farther back than the middle and lower 
falls, and that it rushes down this space in boiling cascades, 
till it reaches a perpendicular rock, over which it leaps about 
600 feet, and then gives a third and final plunge of about 
500, making up a total of little under 2,700 feet. 

When we came to the head of the valley, whence diverge 
the three rocky canyons, we bade adieu to the green 
meadows, and passing up a most exquisite gorge, crossed 
the Illillouette by a wooden bridge, and followed the main 
fork of the Merced, up the central canyon. I do not any- 
where know a lovelier mile of river scenery than on this 
tumultuous rushing stream, leaping from rock to rock, 
sweeping around mossy boulders and falling in crystalline 
cascades — the whole fringed with glittering icicles, and 
overshadowed by tall pine-trees, whose feathery branches 
fringe the steep cliffs and wave in the breeze. 

Presently a louder roar of falling water told us that we 
were nearing the Vernal Falls, and through a frame of dark 
pines we caught a glimpse of the white spirit-like spray- 
cloud. Tying up my pony, we crept to the foot of the 
falls, whence a steep flight of wooden steps has been con- 
structed, by which a pedestrian can ascend about 400 feet 
to the summit, and thence resume his way, thus saving a 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 339 

very long round. But of course four-footed creatures must 
be content to go by the mountain ; and so the pony settled 
our route, greatly to our advantage, for the view thence, 
looking down the canyon and across to Glacier Point, 
proved to be about the finest thing we had seen, as an effect 
of mountain gloom. 

Just above the Vernal Falls comes a reach of the river 
known as The Diamond Race, — a stream so rapid and 
so glittering, that it seems like a shower of sparkling crys- 
tals, each drop a separate gem. I have never seen a race 
which, for speed and dazzling light, could compare with 
these musical, glancing waters. 

For half a mile above it, the river is a tumultuous raging 
flood, rushing at headlong speed down a boulder-strewn 
channel. At the most beautiful point it is crossed by a 
light wooden bridge ; and on the green mountain-meadow 
just beyond, stands the wooden house, to which a kindly 
landlord gave us a cheery, hearty welcome. 

Here the lullaby for the weary is the ceaseless roar of the 
mighty Nevada Falls, which come thundering down the 
cliffs in a sheer leap of 700 feet, losing themselves in a deep 
rock-pool, fringed with tall pines, which loom ghostly and 
solemn through the ever-floating tremulous mists of fine 
spray. 

It is a fall so beautiful as fairly to divide one's allegiance 
to Yo-semite, especially as we first beheld it at about three 
in the afternoon, when the western rays of the lowering 
sun lighted up the dark firs with a golden glow, and dim 
rainbows played on the spray-clouds. It was as if fairy 



340 THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 

weavers had woven borders cf purple and blue, green and 
gold, orange and delicate rose-colour, on a tissue of silvery 
gauze 5 and each dewy drop that rested on the fir-needles 
caught the glorious light, and became a separate prism, as 
though the trees were sprinkled with liquid radiant gems. 

Anything more wonderful than the beauty of the Dia- 
mond Race in the evening light, I never dreamt of. It is 
like a river in a fairy tale, all turned to spray — jewelled, 
glittering spray — rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, all dancing 
and glancing in the sunlight. 

Just below this comes a little reach of the smoothest, 
clearest water, which seems to calm and collect itself ere 
gliding over the edge of a great square-hewn mass of 
granite 400 feet deep, forming the Vernal Falls. Along 
the summit of this rock there runs a very remarkable nat- 
ural ledge about four feet in height, so exactly like the stone 
parapet of a cyclopean rampart that it is scarcely possible 
to believe it is not artificial. Here you can lean safely 
within a few feet of the fall, looking straight down the per- 
pendicular crag. But for this ledge, it would be dangerous 
even to set foot on that smooth, polished rock, which is as 
slippery as ice. 

Early rising here is really no exertion, and it brings its 
own reward, for there is an indescribable charm in the early 
gloaming as it steals over the Sierras — a freshness and an 
exquisite purity of atmosphere which thrills through one's 
being like a breath of the life celestial. 

If you would enjoy it to perfection, you must steal out 
alone ere the glory of the starlight has paled, — as I did this 



THE YO-SEMITE VALLEY 34 1 

morning, following a devious pathway between thickets of 
azalea, whose heavenly fragrance perfumed the valley. 
Then, ascending a steep track through the pine-forest, I 
reached a bald grey crag, commanding a glorious view of 
the valley, and of some of the high peaks beyond. And 
thence I watched the coming of the dawn. 

A pale daffodil light crept upward, and the stars faded 
from heaven. Then the great ghostly granite domes 
changed from deep purple to a cold dead white, and the 
far-distant snow-capped peaks stood out in a glittering 
light, while silvery-grey mists floated upward from the 
canyons, as if awakening from their sleep. Here, just as in 
our own Highlands, a faint chill breath of some cold cur- 
rent invariably heralds the daybreak, and the tremulous 
leaves quiver, and whisper a greeting to the dawn. 

Suddenly a faint flush of rosy light just tinged the highest 
snow-peaks, and, gradually stealing downward, overspread 
range beyond range ; another moment, and the granite 
domes and the great Rock Sentinel alike blazed in the fiery 
glow, which deepened in colour till all the higher crags 
seemed aflame, while the valley still lay shrouded in purple 
gloom, and a great and solemn stillness brooded over all. 

Granite Crags (Edinburgh and London, 1884). 



THE GOLDEN HORN 

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE 

THE land breeze begins to rise, and we make use of it 
to approach nearer and nearer to the Dardanelles. 
Already several large ships, which like us are trying to 
make this difficult entrance, come near us ; their large grey 
sails, like the wings of night-birds, glide silently between 
our brig and Tenedos ; I go down below and fall asleep. 

Break of day : I hear the rapid sailing of vessels and the 
little morning waves that sound around the sides of the brig 
like the song of birds ; I open the port-hole, and I see on a 
chain of low and rounded hills the castles of the Darda- 
nelles with their white walls, their towers, and their im- 
mense mouths for the cannon; the canal is scarcely more 
than a league in width at this place ; it winds, like a beau- 
tiful river, between the exactly similar coasts of Asia and 
Europe. The castles shut in this sea just like the two 
wings of a door ; but in the present condition of Turkey 
and Europe, it would be easy to force a passage by sea, or 
to make a landing and take the forts from the rear; the 
passage of the Dardanelles is not impregnable unless 
guarded by the Russians. 

The rapid current carries us on like an arrow before 
Gallipoli and the villages bordering the canal ; we see the 



THE GOLDEN HORN 343 

isles in the Sea of Marmora frowning before us ; we fol- 
low the coast of Europe for two days and two nights, 
thwarted by the north winds. In the morning we perceive 
perfectly the isles of the princes, in the Sea of Marmora, 
and the Gulf of Nicaea, and on our left the castle of the 
Seven Towers, and the aerial tops of the innumerable min- 
arets of Stamboul, in front of the seven hills of Constanti- 
nople. At each tack, we discover something new. At the 
first view of Constantinople, I experienced a painful emo- 
tion of surprise and disillusion. " What ! is this," I asked 
myself, " the sea, the shore, and the marvellous city for 
which the masters of the world abandoned Rome and the 
coast of Naples ? Is this that capital of the universe, seated 
upon Europe and Asia ; for which all the conquering na- 
tions disputed by turns as the sign of the supremacy of the 
world ? Is this the city that painters and poets imagine 
queen of cities seated upon her hills and her twin seas ; 
enclosed by her gulfs, her towers, her mountains, and con- 
taining all the treasures of nature and the luxury of the 
Orient ? " It is here that one makes comparison with the 
Bay of Naples bearing its white city upon its hollowed 
bosom like a vast amphitheatre ; with Vesuvius losing its 
golden brow in the clouds of smoke and purple lights, the 
forest of Castellamare plunging its black foliage into the 
blue sea, and the islands of Procida and Ischia with their 
volcanic peaks yellow with vine-branches and white with 
villas, shutting in the immense bay like gigantic moles 
thrown up by God himself at the entrance of this 
port ? I see nothing here to compare to that spectacle with 



344 THE GOLDEN HORN 

which my eyes are always enchanted ; I am sailing, it 
is true, upon a beautiful and lovely sea, but from the 
low coasts, rounded and monotonous hills rear themselves; 
it is true that the snows of Olympus of Thrace whiten the 
horizon, but they are only a white cloud in the sky and do 
not make the landscape solemn enough. At the back of 
the gulf I see nothing but the same rounded hills of the 
same height without rocks, without coves, without inden- 
tations, and Constantinople, which the pilot points out with 
his finger, is nothing but a white and circumscribed city 
upon a large knoll on the European coast. Is it worth 
while having come so far to be disenchanted ? I did not 
wish to look at it any longer ; however, the ceaseless tack- 
ings of the ship brought us sensibly nearer; we coasted 
along the castle of the Seven Towers, an immense mediaeval 
grey block, severe in construction, which faces the sea at 
the angle of the Greek walls of the ancient Byzantium, 
and we came to anchor beneath the houses of Stamboul in 
the Sea of Marmora, in the midst of a host of ships and 
boats delayed like ourselves from port by the violence of 
the north winds. It was five o'clock, the sky was serene 
and the sun brilliant ; I began to recover from my disdain 
of Constantinople ; the walls that enclosed this portion of 
the city picturesquely built of the debris of ancient walls 
and surmounted by gardens, kiosks and little houses of 
wood painted red, formed the foreground of the picture ; 
above, the terraces of numerous houses rose in pyramid- 
like tiers, story upon story, cut across with the tops of 
orange-trees and the sharp, black spires of cypress; higher 



THE GOLDEN HORN 345 

still, seven or eight large mosques crowned the hill, and, 
flanked by their open-work minarets and their mauresque 
colonnades, lifted into the sky their gilded domes, flaming 
with the palpitating sunlight j the walls, painted with tender 
blue, the leaden covers of the cupolas that encircled them, 
gave them the appearance and the transparent glaze of 
monuments of porcelain. The immemorial cypresses lend 
to these domes their motionless and sombre peaks ; and the 
various tints of the painted houses of the city make the 
vast hill gay with all the colours of a flower-garden. No 
noise issues from the streets ; no lattice of the innumerable 
windows opens j no movement disturbs the habitation of 
such a great multitude of men : everything seems to be 
sleeping under the broiling sunlight ; the gulf, furrowed in 
every direction with sails of all forms and sizes, alone gives 
signs of life. Every moment we see vessels in full sail clear 
the Golden Horn (the opening of the Bosphorus), the true 
harbour of Constantinople, passing by us flying towards the 
Dardanelles ; but we can not perceive the entrance of the 
Bosphorus, nor even understand its position. We dine on 
the deck opposite this magical spectacle ; Turkish caiques 
come to question us and to bring us provisions and food ; 
the boatmen tell us that there is no longer any plague ; I 
send my letters to the city ; at seven o'clock, M. Truqui, 
the consul-general of Sardaigne, accompanied by officers of 
his legation, comes to pay us a visit and offer us the hospi- 
tality of his house in Pera ; there is not the slightest hope of 
finding a lodging in the recently burned city ; the obliging 
cordiality, and the attraction that M. Truqui inspires at the 



346 THE GOLDEN HORN 

first moment, induces us to accept. The contrary wind still 
blows, and the brigs cannot raise anchor this evening : we 
sleep on board. 

At five o'clock I am standing on the deck; the captain 
lowers a boat ; I descend with him, and we set sail to- 
wards the mouth of the Bosphorus, coasting along the walls 
of Constantinople, which the sea washes. After half an 
hour's navigation through a multitude of ships at anchor, 
we reach the walls of the Seraglio, which stand next to 
those of the city, and form, at the extremity of the hill that 
bears Stamboul, the angle that separates the Sea of Mar- 
mora from the canal of the Bosphorus and the Golden 
Horn, or the grand inner roadstead of Constantinople. It is 
here that God and man, nature and art, have placed, or 
created, in concert the most marvellous view that human 
eyes may contemplate upon the earth. I gave an involun- 
tary cry, and I forgot for ever the Bay of Naples and all its 
enchantments; to compare anything to this magnificent 
and gracious combination would be to insult creation. 

The walls supporting the circular terraces of the im- 
mense gardens of the great Seraglio were a few feet from 
us to our left, separated from the sea by a narrow sidewalk 
of stone flags washed by the ceaseless billows, where the 
perpetual current of the Bosphorus formed little murmur- 
ing waves, as blue as those of the Rhone at Geneva ; these 
terraces that rise in gentle inclines up to the Sultan's palace, 
where you perceive the gilded domes across the gigantic 
tops of the plantain-trees and the cypresses, are themselves 
planted with enormous cypresses and plantains whose 



THE GOLDEN HORN 347 

trunks dominate the walls and whose boughs, spreading be- 
yond the garden, hang over the sea in cascades of foliage 
shadowing the caiques ; the rowers stop from time to time 
beneath their shade ; every now and then these groups of 
trees are interrupted by palaces, pavilions, kiosks, doors 
sculptured and gi'lded opening upon the sea, or batteries of 
cannon of copper and bronze in ancient and peculiar 
shapes. 

Several pulls of the oar brought us to the precise point of 
the Golden Horn where you enjoy at once a view of the 
Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora, and, finally, of the entire 
harbour, or, rather, the inland sea of Constantinople ; there 
we forgot Marmora, the coast of Asia, and the Bosphorus, 
taking in with one glance the basin of the Golden Horn 
and the seven cities seated upon the seven hills of Constan- 
tinople, all converging towards the arm of the sea that 
forms the unique and incomparable city, that is at the same 
time city, country, sea, harbour, bank of flowers, gardens, 
wooded mountains, deep valleys, an ocean of houses, a 
swarm of ships and streets, tranquil lakes, and enchanted 
solitudes, — a view that no brush can render except by de- 
tails, and where each stroke of the oar gives the eye and 
soul contradictory aspects and impressions. 

We set sail towards the hills of Galata and Pera ; the 
Seraglio receded from us and grew larger in receding in 
proportion as the eye embraced more and more the vast 
outlines of its walls and the multitude of its roofs, its trees, 
its kiosks and its palaces. Of itself it is sufficient to 
constitute a large city. The harbour hollows itself out 



348 THE GOLDEN HORN 

more and more before us ; it winds like a canal between 
the flanks of the curved mountains, and increases as we 
advance. The harbour does not resemble a harbour in the 
least ; it is rather a large river like the Thames, enclosing 
the two coasts of the hills laden with towns, and covered 
from one bank to the other with an interminable flotilla of 
ships variously grouped the entire length of the houses. 
We pass by this innumerable multitude of boats, some 
riding at anchor and some about to set sail, sailing before 
the wind towards the Bosphorus, towards the Black Sea, 
or towards the Sea of Marmora j boats of all shapes and 
sizes and flags, from the Arabian barque, whose prow springs 
and rises like the beak of antique galleys, to the vessel of 
three decks with its glittering walls of bronze. Some flocks 
of Turkish caiques, managed by one or two rowers in 
silken sleeves, little boats that serve as carriages in the 
maritime streets of this amphibious town, circulate between 
the large masses, cross and knock against each other with- 
out overturning, and jostle one another like a crowd in 
public places ; and clouds of gulls, like beautiful white 
pigeons, rise from the sea at their approach, to travel 
further away and be rocked upon the waves. I did not 
try to count the vessels, the ships, the brigs, the boats of 
all kinds and the barks that slept or travelled in the har- 
bour of Constantinople, from the mouth of the Bosphorus 
and the point of the Seraglio to Eyoub and the delicious 
valleys of sweet waters. The Thames at London offers 
nothing in comparison. It will suffice to say that inde- 
pendently of the Turkish flotilla and the European men- 



THE GOLDEN HORN 349 

of-war at anchor in the centre of the canal, the two sides 
of the Golden Horn are covered two or three vessels deep 
for about a mile in length. We could only see the ocean 
by looking between the file of prows and our glance lost 
itself at the back of the gulf which contracted and ran into 
the shore amid a veritable forest of masts. 

I have just been strolling along the Asian shore on 
my return this evening to Constantinople, and I find it 
a thousand times more beautiful than the European shore. 
The Asian shore owes almost nothing to man ; every- 
thing here has been accomplished by nature. Here there 
is no Buyukdere, no Therapia, no palace of ambassa- 
dors, and no town of Armenians or Franks ; there are 
only mountains, gorges that separate them, little valleys 
carpeted with meadows that seem to dig themselves out 
of the rocks, rivulets that wind about them, cascades 
that whiten them with their foam, forests that hang to 
their flanks, glide into their ravines, and descend to 
the very edges of the innumerable coast gulfs ; a variety 
of forms and tints, and of leafy verdure, which the 
brush of a landscape-painter could not even hope to 
suggest. Some isolated houses of sailors or Turkish gar- 
deners are scattered at great distances on the shore, 
or thrown on the foreground of a wooded hill, or 
grouped upon the point of rocks where the current carries 
you, and breaks into waves as blue as the night sky ; some 
white sails of fishermen, who creep along the deep coves, 
which you see glide from one plane-tree to another, like 
linen that the washerwomen fold ; innumerable flights of 



35° THE GOLDEN HORN 

white birds that dry themselves on the edge of the 
meadows ; eagles that hover among the heights of the 
mountains near the sea ; mysterious creeks entirely shut in 
between rocks and trunks of gigantic trees, whose boughs, 
overcharged with leaves, bend over the waves and form 
upon the sea cradles wherein the caiques creep. One or 
two villages hidden in the shadow of these creeks with 
their gardens behind them on those green slopes, and their 
group of trees at the foot of the rocks, with their barks 
rocked by the gentle waves before their doors, their clouds 
of doves on the roofs, their women and children at the 
windows, their old men seated beneath the plane-trees at 
the foot of the minaret ; labourers returning from the fields 
in their caiques; others who have filled their barks with 
green faggots, myrtle, or flowering heath to dry it for fuel 
in the winter ; hidden behind these heaps of slanting 
verdure that border and descend into the water, you per- 
ceive neither the bark nor the rower, and you believe that 
a portion of the bank detached from the earth by the 
current is floating at haphazard on the sea with its green 
foliage and its perfumed flowers. The shore presents this 
same appearance as far as the castle of Mahomet II., 
which from this coast also seems to shut in the Bosphorus 
like a Swiss lake ; there, it changes its character ; the hills, 
less rugged, sink their flanks and more gently hollow into 
narrow valleys ; the Asiatic villages extend more richly and 
nearer together; the Sweet Waters of Asia, a charming little 
plain shadowed by trees and sown with kiosks and Moor- 
ish fountains opens out to the vision. 



THE GOLDEN HORN 35 1 

Beyond the palace of Beglierby, the Asian coast again 
becomes wooded and solitary as far as Scutari, which is as 
brilliant as a garden of roses, at the extremity of a cape at 
the entrance of the Sea of Marmora. Opposite, the verdant 
point of the Seraglio presents itself to the eye ; and between 
the European coast, crowned with its three painted towns, 
and the coast of Stamboul, all glittering with its cupolas 
and minarets, opens the immense port of Constantinople, 
where the ships anchored at the two banks leave only one 
large water-way for the caiques. I glide through this laby- 
rinth of buildings, as in a Venetian gondola under the 
shadow of palaces, and I land at the echelle des Morts, under 
an avenue of cypresses. 

Voyage en Orient (Paris, 1843). 



THE YELLOWSTONE 1 

RUDYARD KIPLING 

" That desolate land and lone 
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone 
Roar down their mountain path." 

TWICE have I written this letter from end to end. 
Twice have I torn it up, fearing lest those across 
the water should say that I had gone mad on a sudden. 
Now we will begin for the third time quite solemnly and 
soberly. I have been through the Yellowstone National 
Park in a buggy, in the company of an adventurous old 
lady from Chicago and her husband, who disapproved of 
scenery as being " ongodly." I fancy it scared them. 

We began, as you know, with the Mammoth Hot 
Springs. They are only a gigantic edition of those pink 
and white terraces not long ago destroyed by earthquake in 
New Zealand. At one end of the little valley in which the 
hotel stands the lime-laden springs that break from the 
pine-covered hillsides have formed a frozen cataract of 
white, lemon, and palest pink formations, through and over 
and in which water of the warmest bubbles and drips and 
trickles from pale-green lagoon to exquisitely fretted basin. 

1 Published by permission of Rudyard Kipling. Copyright, 1899, by 
Rudyard Kipling. 



THE YELLOWSTONE 353 

The ground rings hollow as a kerosene-tin, and some day 
the Mammoth Hotel, guests and all, will sink into the 
caverns below and be turned into a stalactite. When I set 
foot on the first of the terraces, a tourist — trampled ramp 
of scabby grey stuff, I met a steam of iron-red hot water, 
which ducked into a hole like a rabbit. Followed a gentle 
chuckle of laughter, and then a deep, exhausted sigh from 
nowhere in particular. Fifty feet above my head a jet of 
steam rose up and died out in the blue. It was worse than 
the boiling mountain at Myanoshita. The dirty white de- 
posit gave place to lime whiter than snow ; and I found a 
basin which some learned hotel-keeper has christened 
Cleopatra's pitcher, or Mark Antony's whisky-jug, or 
something equally poetical. It was made of frosted silver; 
it was filled with water as clear as the sky. I do not know 
the depth of that wonder. The eye looked down beyond 
grottoes and caves of beryl into an abyss that communicated 
directly with the central fires of earth. And the pool was 
in pain, so that it could not refrain from talking about it ; 
muttering and chattering and moaning. From the lips of 
the lime-ledges, forty feet under water, spurts of silver 
bubbles would fly up and break the peace of the crystal 
atop. Then the whole pool would shake and grow dim, 
and there were noises. I removed myself only to find 
other pools all equally unhappy, rifts in the ground, full of 
running red-hot water, slippery sheets of deposit overlaid 
with greenish grey hot water, and here and there pit-holes 
dry as a rifled tomb in India, dusty and waterless. Else- 
where the infernal waters had first boiled dead and then 



354 THE YELLOWSTONE 

embalmed the palms and underwood, or the forest trees had 
taken heart and smothered up a blind formation with 
greenery, so that it was only by scraping the earth you 
could tell what fires had raged beneath. Yet the pines will 
win the battle in years to come, because Nature, who first 
forges all her work in her great smithies, has nearly finished 
this job, and is ready to temper it in the soft brown earth. 
The fires are dying down ; the hotel is built where terraces 
have overflowed into flat wastes of deposit ; the pines have 
taken possession of the high ground whence the terraces 
first started. Only the actual curve of the cataract stands 
clear, and it is guarded by soldiers who patrol it with loaded 
six-shooters, in order that the tourist may not bring up 
fence-rails and sink them in a pool, or chip the fretted 
tracery of the formations with a geological hammer, or, 
walking where the crust is too thin, foolishly cook him- 
self. . . . 

Next dawning, entering a buggy of fragile construction, 
with the old people from Chicago, I embarked on my 
perilous career. We ran straight up a mountain till we 
could see sixty miles away, the white houses of Cook City 
on another mountain, and the whiplash-like trail leading 
thereto. The live air made me drunk. If Tom, the 
driver, had proposed to send the mares in a bee-line to the 
city, I should have assented, and so would the old lady, 
who chewed gum and talked about her symptoms. The 
tub-ended rock-dog, which is but the translated prairie-dog, 
broke across the road under our horses' feet, the rabbit and 
the chipmunk danced with fright ; we heard the roar of the 



THE YELLOWSTONE 355 

river, and the road went round a corner. On one side piled 
rock and shale, that enjoined silence for fear of a general 
slide-down; on the other a sheer drop, and a fool of a 
noisy river below. Then, apparently in the middle of the 
road, lest any should find driving too easy, a post of rock. 
Nothing beyond that save the flank of a cliff". Then my 
stomach departed from me, as it does when you swing, for 
we left the dirt, which was at least some guarantee of 
safety, and sailed out round the curve, and up a steep in- 
cline, on a plank-road built out from the cliff". The planks 
were nailed at the outer edge, and did not shift or creak 
very much — but enough, quite enough. That was the 
Golden Gate. I got my stomach back again when we 
trotted out on to a vast upland adorned with a lake and 
hills. Have you ever seen an untouched land — the face of 
virgin Nature ? It is rather a curious sight, because the 
hills are choked with timber that has never known an axe, 
and the storm has rent a way through this timber, so that a 
hundred thousand trees lie matted together in swathes; and 
since each tree lies where it falls, you may behold trunk 
and branch returning to the earth whence they sprang — ex- 
actly as the body of man returns — each limb making its 
own little grave, the grass climbing above the bark, till at 
last there remains only the outline of a tree upon the rank 
undergrowth. 

Then we drove under a cliff" of obsidian, which is black 
glass, some two hundred feet high ; and the road at its foot 
was made of black glass that crackled. This was no great 
matter, because half an hour before Tom had pulled up in 



356 THE YELLOWSTONE 

the woods that we might sufficiently admire a mountain who 
stood all by himself, shaking with laughter or rage. . . . 

Then by companies after tiffin we walked chattering to 
the uplands of Hell. They call it the Norris Geyser Basin 
on Earth. It was as though the tide of dissolution had 
gone out, but would presently return, across innumerable 
acres of dazzling white geyser formation. There were no 
terraces here, but all other horrors. Not ten yards from 
the road a blast of steam shot up roaring every few seconds, 
a mud volcano spat filth to Heaven, streams of hot water 
rumbled under foot, plunged through the dead pines in 
steaming cataracts and died on a waste of white where 
green-grey, black-yellow, and link pools roared, shouted, 
bubbled, or hissed as their wicked fancies prompted. By 
the look of the eye the place should have been frozen over. 
By the feel of the feet it was warm. I ventured out among 
the pools, carefully following tracks, but one unwary foot 
began to sink, a squirt of water followed, and having no de- 
sire to descend quick into Tophet I returned to the shore 
where the mud and the sulphur and the nameless fat ooze- 
vegetation of Lethe lay. But the very road rang as though 
built over a gulf; and besides how was I to tell when the 
raving blast of steam would find its vent insufficient and 
blow the whole affair into Nirvana ? There was a potent 
stench of stale eggs everywhere, and crystals of sulphur 
crumbled under the foot, and the glare of the sun on the 
white stuff was blinding. 

We curved the hill and entered a forest of spruce, the 
path serpentining between the tree-boles, the wheels run- 



THE YELLOWSTONE 357 

ning silent on immemorial mould. There was nothing 
alive in the forest save ourselves. Only a river was speak- 
ing angrily somewhere to the right. For miles we drove 
till Tom bade us alight and look at certain falls. Where- 
fore we stepped out of that forest and nearly fell down a 
cliff which guarded a tumbled river and returned demand- 
ing fresh miracles. If the water had run uphill, we should 
perhaps have taken more notice of it ; but 'twas only a 
waterfall, and I really forget whether the water was warm 
or cold. There is a stream here called Firehole River. It 
is fed by the overflow from the various geysers and basins, 
— a warm and deadly river wherein no fish breed. I think 
we crossed it a few dozen times in the course of the day. 

Then the sun began to sink, and there was a taste of 
frost about, and we went swiftly from the forest into the 
open, dashed across a branch of the Firehole River and 
found a wood shanty, even rougher than the last, at which, 
after a forty mile drive, we were to dine and sleep. Half a 
mile from this place stood, on the banks of the Firehole 
River a " beaver-lodge," and there were rumours of bears 
and other cheerful monsters in the woods on the hill at the 
back of the building. 

Once upon a time there was a carter who brought his 
team and a friend into the Yellowstone Park without due 
thought. Presently they came upon a few of the natural 
beauties of the place, and that carter turned his friend's 
team, howling : " Get back o' this, Tim. All Hell's alight 
under our noses." And they call the place Hell's Half- 
acre to this day. We, too, the old lady from Chicago, her 



35^ THE YELLOWSTONE 

husband, Tom, and the good little mares came to Hell's 
Half-acre, which is about sixty acres, and when Tom said : 
"Would you like to drive over it ? " we said : ''Certainly 
no, and if you do, we shall report you to the authorities." 
There was a plain, blistered and puled and abominable, and 
it was given over to the sportings and spoutings of devils 
who threw mud and steam and dirt at each other with 
whoops and halloos and bellowing curses. The place 
smelt of the refuse of the Pit, and that odour mixed with 
the clean, wholesome aroma of the pines in our nostrils 
throughout the day. Be it known that the Park is laid 
out, like Ollendorf, in exercises of progressive difficulty. 
Hell's Half-acre was a preclude to ten or twelve miles of 
geyser formation. We passed hot streams boiling in the 
forest ; saw whiffs of steam beyond these, and yet other 
whiffs breaking through the misty green hills in the far dis- 
tance ; we trampled on sulphur, and sniffed things much 
worse than any sulphur which is known to the upper 
world; and so came upon a park-like place where Tom 
suggested we should get out and play with the geysers. 

Imagine mighty green fields splattered with lime beds : 
all the flowers of the summer growing up to the very edge 
of the lime. That was the first glimpse of the geyser 
basins. The buggy had pulled up close to a rough, broken, 
blistered cone of stuff between ten and twenty feet high. 
There was trouble in that place — moaning, splashing, gur- 
gling, and the clank of machinery. A spurt of boiling water 
jumped into the air and a wash of water followed. I re- 
moved swiftly. The old lady from Chicago shrieked. 



THE YELLOWSTONE 359 

"What a wicked waste ! " said her husband. I think they 
call it the Riverside Geyser. Its spout was torn and 
ragged like the mouth of a gun when a shell has burst 
there. It grumbled madly for a moment or two and then 
was still. I crept over the steaming lime — it was the 
burning marl on which Satan lay — and looked fearfully 
down its mouth. You should never look a gift geyser in 
the mouth. I beheld a horrible slippery, slimy funnel with 
water rising and falling ten feet at a time. Then the water 
rose to lip level with a rush and an infernal bubbling 
troubled this Devil's Bethesda before the sullen heave of 
the crest of a wave lapped over the edge and made me run. 
Mark the nature of the human soul ! I had begun with 
awe, not to say terror. I stepped back from the flanks of 
the Riverside Geyser saying : " Pooh ! Is that all it can 
do ? " Yet for aught I knew the whole thing might have 
blown up at a minute's notice ; she, he, or it, being an ar- 
rangement of uncertain temper. 

We drifted on up that miraculous valley. On either 
side of us were hills from a thousand to fifteen feet high 
and wooded from heel to crest. As far as the eye could 
range forward were columns of steam in the air, misshapen 
lumps of lime, most like preadamite monsters, still pools of 
turquoise blue, stretches of blue cornflowers, a river that 
coiled on itself twenty times, boulders of strange colours, 
and ridges of glaring, staring white. 

The old lady from Chicago poked with her parasol at 
the pools as though they had been alive. On one particu- 
larly innocent-looking little puddle she turned her back for 



360 THE YELLOWSTONE 

a moment, and there rose behind her a twenty-foot column 
of water and steam. Then she shrieked and protested that 
" she never thought it would ha' done it," and the old man 
chewed his tobacco steadily, and mourned for steam power 
wasted. I embraced the whitened stump of a middle-sized 
pine that had grown all too close to a hot pool's lip, and 
the whole thing turned over under my hand as a tree would 
do in a nightmare. From right and left came the trumpet- 
ings of elephants at play. I stepped into a pool of old 
dried blood rimmed with the nodding cornflowers ; the 
blood changed to ink even as I trod ; and ink and blood 
were washed away in a spurt of boiling sulphurous water 
spat out from the lee of a bank of flowers. This sounds 
mad, doesn't it ? . . . 

We rounded a low spur of hills, and came out upon a 
field of aching snowy lime, rolled in sheets, twisted into 
knots, riven with rents and diamonds and stars, stretching 
for more than half a mile in every direction. In this place 
of despair lay most of the big geysers who know when 
there is trouble in Krakatoa, who tell the pines when there 
is a cyclone on the Atlantic seaboard, and who — are ex- 
hibited to visitors under pretty and fanciful names. The 
first mound that I encountered belonged to a goblin splash- 
ing in his tub. I heard him kick, pull a shower-bath on 
his shoulders, gasp, crack his joints, and rub himself down 
with a towel ; then he let the water out of the bath, as a 
thoughtful man should, and it all sank down out of sight 
till another goblin arrived. Yet they called this place the 
Lioness and the Cubs. It lies not very far from the Lion, 



THE YELLOWSTONE 36 1 

which is a sullen, roaring beast, and they say that when it 
is very active the other geysers presently follow suit. 
After the Krakatoa eruption all the geysers went mad to- 
gether, spouting, spurting, and bellowing till men feared 
that they would rip up the whole field. Mysterious sym- 
pathies exist among them, and when the Giantess speaks 
(of her more anon) they all hold their peace. 

I was watching a solitary spring, when, far across the 
fields, stood up a plume of spun glass, iridescent and superb 
against the sky. " That," said the trooper, " is Old Faith- 
ful. He goes off every sixty-five minutes to the minute, 
plays for five minutes, and sends up a column of water a 
hundred and fifty feet high. By the time you have looked 
at all the other geysers he will be ready to play." 

So we looked and we wondered at the Beehive, whose 
mouth is built up exactly like a hive ; at the Turban (which 
is not in the least like a turban) ; and at many, many 
other geysers, hot holes, and springs. Some of them rum- 
bled, some hissed, some went off" spasmodically, and others 
lay still in sheets of sapphire and beryl. 

Would you believe that even these terrible creatures have 
to be guarded by troopers to prevent the irreverent Ameri- 
can from chipping the cones to pieces, or worse still, mak- 
ing the geysers sick ? If you take of soft-soap a small barrel- 
ful and drop it down a geyser's mouth, that geyser will pres- 
ently be forced to lay all before you and for days after- 
wards will be of an irritated and inconsistent stomach. 
When they told me the tale I was filled with sympathy. 
Now I wish that I had stolen soap and tried the experi- 



362 THE YELLOWSTONE 

ment on some lonely little beast of a geyser in the woods. 
It sounds so probable — and so human. 

Yet he would be a bold man who would administer emet- 
ics to the Giantess. She is flat-lipped, having no mouth, 
she looks like a pool, fifty feet long and thirty wide, and 
there is no ornamentation about her. At irregular intervals 
she speaks, and sends up a column of water over two 
hundred feet high to begin with ; then she is angry for a 
day and a half — sometimes for two days. Owing to her 
peculiarity of going mad in the night not many people have 
seen the Giantess at her finest ; but the clamour of her un- 
rest, men say, shakes the wooden hotel, and echoes like 
thunder among the hills. When I saw her; trouble was 
brewing. The pool bubbled seriously, and at five-minute 
intervals, sank a foot or two, then rose, washed over the 
rim, and huge steam bubbles broke on the top. Just before 
an eruption the water entirely disappears from view. 
Whenever you see the water die down in a geyser-mouth 
get away as fast as you can. I saw a tiny little geyser suck 
in its breath in this way, and instinct made me retire while 
it hooted after me. Leaving the Giantess to swear, and 
spit, and thresh about, we went over to Old Faithful, who 
by reason of his faithfulness has benches close to him 
whence you may comfortably watch. At the appointed 
hour we heard the water flying up and down the mouth 
with the sob of waves in a cave. Then came the prelimin- 
ary gouts, then a roar and a rush, and that glittering column 
of diamonds rose, quivered, stood still for a minute ; then 
it broke, and the rest was a confused snarl of water not 



THE YELLOWSTONE 363 

thirty feet high. All the young ladies — not more than 
twenty — in the tourist band remarked that it was " elegant," 
and betook themselves to writing their names in the bottoms 
of shallow pools. Nature fixes the insult indelibly, and the 
after-years will learn that " Hattie," " Sadie," " Mamie," 
" Sophie," and so forth, have taken out their hair-pins, and 
scrawled in the face of Old Faithful. 

Next morning Tom drove us on, promising new won- 
ders. He pulled up after a few miles at a clump of brush- 
wood where an army was drowning. I could hear the sick 
gasps and thumps of the men going under, but when I broke 
through the brushwood the hosts had fled, and there were 
only pools of pink, black, and white lime, thick as turbid 
honey. They shot up a pat of mud every minute or two, 
choking in the effort. It was an uncanny sight. Do you 
wonder that in the old days the Indians were careful to 
avoid the Yellowstone ? Geysers are permissible, but mud 
is terrifying. The old lady from Chicago took a piece of 
it, and in half an hour it died into lime-dust and blew away 
between her fingers. All maya — illusion, — you see ! Then 
we clinked over sulphur in crystals ; there was a waterfall of 
boiling water; and a road across a level park hotly contested 
by the beavers. 

As we climbed the long path the road grew viler and 
viler till it became without disguise, the bed of a torrent ; 
and just when things were at their rockiest we emerged 
into a little sapphire lake — but never sapphire was so blue — 
called Mary's lake ; and that between eight and nine thou- 
sand feet above the sea. Then came grass downs, all on a 



364 THE YELLOWSTONE 

vehement slope, so that the buggy following the new-made 
road ran on to the two off-wheels mostly, till we dipped 
head-first into a ford, climbed up a cliff, raced along a 
down, dipped again and pulled up dishevelled at " Larry's " 
for lunch and an hour's rest. 

The sun was sinking when we heard the roar of falling 
waters and came to a broad river along whose banks we 
ran. And then — oh, then ! I might at a pinch describe 
the infernal regions, but not the other place. Be it known 
to you that the Yellowstone River has occasion to run 
through a gorge about eight miles long. To get to the 
bottom of the gorge it makes two leaps, one of about 120 
and the other of 300 feet. I investigated the upper or lesser 
fall, which is close to the hotel. Up to that time nothing 
particular happens to the Yellowstone, its banks being only 
rocky, rather steep, and plentifully adorned with pines. At 
the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid, ribbed with 
a little foam, and not more than thirty yards wide. Then 
it goes over still green and rather more solid than before. 
After a minute or two you, sitting on a rock directly above 
the drop, begin to understand that something has occurred ; 
that the river has jumped a huge distance between the solid 
cliff walls and what looks like the gentle froth of ripples 
lapping the sides of the gorge below is really the outcome 
of great waves. And the river yells aloud ; but the cliffs 
do not allow the yells to escape. 

That inspection began with curiosity and finished in ter- 
ror, for it seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrys- 
olite from under my feet. I followed with the others 



THE YELLOWSTONE 365 

round the corner to arrive at the brink of the canon ; we 
had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent to begin with, 
for the ground rises more than the river drops. Stately pine 
woods fringe either lip of the gorge, which is — the Gorge 
of the Yellowstone. 

All I can say is that without warning or preparation I 
looked into a gulf 1,700 feet deep with eagles and fish- 
hawks circling far below. And the sides of that gulf were 
one wild welter of colour — crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, 
amber, honey splashed with port-wine, snow-white, ver- 
milion, lemon, and silver-grey, in wide washes. The sides 
did not fall sheer, but were graven by time and water and 
air into monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs, men and 
women of the old time. So far below that no sound of its 
strife could reach us, the Yellowstone River ran — a finger- 
wide strip of jade-green. The sunlight took these won- 
drous walls and gave fresh hues to those that nature had al- 
ready laid there. Once I saw the dawn break over a lake 
in Rajputana and the sun set over Oodey Sagar amid a 
circle of Holman Hunt hills. This time I was watching 
both performances going on below me — upside down you 
understand — and the colours were real ! The canon was 
burning like Troy town ; but it would not burn forever, 
and, thank goodness, neither pen nor brush could ever por- 
tray its splendours adequately. The Academy would reject 
the picture for a chromo-lithograph. The public would 
scoff* at the letter-press for Daily Telegraphese. " I will 
leave this thing alone," said I; "'tis my peculiar property. 
Nobody else shall share it with me." Evening crept 



366 THE YELLOWSTONE 

through the pines that shadowed us, but the full glory of 
the day flamed in that canon as we went out very cautiously 
to a jutting piece of rock — blood-red or pink it was — that 
overhung the deepest deeps of all. Now I know what it is 
to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset. Giddiness took 
away all sensation of touch or form ; but the sense of blind- 
ing colour remained. When I reached the mainland again 
I had sworn that I had been floating. 

From Sea to Sea : Letters of Travel (New York, 1899). 



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